Chapter 76
Taking Nick Home
Chapter 71: Taking Nick Home
Logan’s POV
Nick’s room smelled like lavender.
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I noticed it the moment I carried him in from the car, still half-asleep and compliant in the way children were when exhaustion overrode their independence, not protesting or putting up a fuss which made my job easier tonight because we were both raw and exhausted.
I laid him down, pulled the covers up, and stood there in the dim light of his nightlight while the
smell registered to me as i realized it, i hadn’t taken notice before, due to stress but now i could
smell it-faint, clean, botanical. Not from anything in the room now, like a new scent that Mrs
Peterson had dropped to make it better but from years of it.
From whatever Sedona had done in this room, while looking after Nick, making sure his clothes
were of the right kind and his allergies were something that was controlled until the scent itself, the scent that i had come to associate with Sedona’s presence had embedded itself into his
sheets, his curtains, the air itself.
She wasn’t here and the smell of what she’d made was still everywhere.
I sat down in the chair by his bed-the armchair that had been moved in there at some point, which
I realized now must have been Sedona’s doing, because where else did you sit during the long nights of childhood illness, during the vigils that a child’s fragile health sometimes required-and I
watched him sleep.
His breathing was easier. The IV antihistamines had done what they were supposed to do, had broken the worst of the reaction, and by the time we’d left the hospital the hives were already beginning to fade from his neck and face, retreating back to his arms and torso where they’d started. The doctor had given me a prescription, written instructions down that i should follow to the dot to avoid something like this happening again, and had also gone ahead to add in a follow-up appointment. Standard protocols for a child with a documented history of severe allergic reactions.
Except the history had been documented in Sedona’s head, not anywhere I could access.
The discharge nurse had asked me about his triggers, about his regular medications, about whether he was currently on any antihistamine regimen as a preventative measure.
I’d told her I’d have to check with his pediatrician for the full history, which was the polite way of saying I didn’t know anything about my own son and i know how it looks but it was a mistake i was
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working hard to correct.
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She’d been professionally neutral about it. She’d seen parents who didn’t know things about their children before and her job was more focused on saving those children from the maistakes of the parents while secretly judging the parents.
She’d added notes to his chart and sent us home with instructions I understood logically but had no idea what i was supposed to do with them…
I sat in the chair and looked at my son and tried to remember what I actually knew about Nick’s
medical needs.
The asthma inhaler. I knew about that. Blue inhaler, always in his bag, always in the car, spare in the kitchen drawer. Sedona had drilled that one into me so thoroughly that even I’d retained it.
The nut allergy. Tree nuts, not peanuts-an important distinction that Sedona had explained several times and that I’d filed away correctly, though I had no idea where mild it could be for nick downwards to the dangerous ones.
The skin sensitivity. I knew it existed. I knew regular soap was a problem and that Sedona had switched everything in the house to fragrance-free alternatives, because she’d mentioned it once when I’d bought the wrong shampoo and brought it home. I’d said okay and forgotten about it, and Sedona had handled it from there, as she handled everything from there.
What else?
I sat in the dim lavender-scented room and tried to inventory what I knew about my own son’s body and its specific vulnerabilities, and discovered how thin the list actually was.
I knew the surface level. The dramatic things, the emergency-room-worthy things. What I didn’t know were all the smaller things underneath, that worked hard to stop it from becoming the dramatic things that i was bound to find out.
Sedona had built a system. An entire invisible system for managing a child whose body required management, and she’d built it alone, and I’d benefited from the results-a healthy, thriving six-year-old who rarely ended up in the emergency room, who had been sicker in infancy than most children were their entire lives but had somehow emerged whole-without ever asking how it
worked.
I’d thought she was overprotective. I’d said it to her directly. Had agreed with my mother’s assessment that she was smothering him, that Catherine was better for him than her, because
with Catherine, he could actually live a life.
Catherine had let him eat whatever he wanted at her apartment. I hadn’t checked what that meant,
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hadn’t thought to ask whether Nick’s dietary restrictions would be relevant in Catherine’s kitchen. I’d assumed Sedona was exaggerating, as I’d assumed about most of her concerns.
Nick had come home from one of those visits with the beginning of a rash. I’d thought it was from playing outside. Sedona had looked at it and gone quiet and taken him upstairs, and I’d thought she was being dramatic, making it into a bigger thing than it was.
She’d known exactly what it was. She’d known where it came from and what had triggered it.
She’d said nothing to me because she’d learned by then that saying things to me produced either dismissal or a conversation about whether she was being reasonable.
I pressed my face into my hands.
Mrs. Peterson had gone to bed by the time I came downstairs. The house was quiet and dark except for the kitchen light I’d left on, throwing a yellow rectangle across the floor of the hallway. stood in it for a moment, not sure what I’d come downstairs for, and then opened the pantry.
The ingredients were still there.
She’d taken the cream she’d already made, the finisihed products, but the ingredients she used to make it, was still around.
I picked up the lavender oil and opened it.
The smell was immediate and familiar. This was the exact smell from Nick’s room, from the cream that had worked when nothing else did, from three years of Sedona applying it to my son’s skin and watching the reaction subside.
I put it down carefully and closed the pantry.
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