Chapter 68
Chapter 63: 1 Want Mummy
Sedona’s POV
I hadn’t been inside a hospital since I’d found Sedona there, standing looking sickly while talking to the nurse, since i walked away furious while she was dying and i pretended that i didn’t see the signs, more furious that i had caught her with a man she called Cameron and too hot tempered to
think that she wouldn’t be cheating like i assumed and their base of operation happened to be a f g hospital of all places.
Nick held my hand in the triage line, which he rarely did anymore-he’d been asserting his
independence aggressively for the past year, part of growing up, part of the general rebellion that
he had started against Sedona’s oversight, when he refused to let sedona fuss over him, saying
that he didnt need her hugs and kisses anymore, behaviours back then that I’d mistakenly encouraged. But tonight he held my hand and I didn’t comment on it.
The triage nurse assessed him quickly, took his vitals, asked the same questions the phone nurse had asked me. I gave the same incomplete answers that i had and i could see her judging silently with her eyes, what kind of father doesnt know anything about his child, his only child for that matter. But she was too polite to say anything.
She made a note and moved us to a treatment bay, and within twenty minutes a doctor had confirmed what I’d suspected and started Nick on IV antihistamines, which was the only thing that was going to bring the reaction under control at this point.
Nick cried when they put the IV in. Not loudly, just crying silently, the tears of a child who was already exhausted and this was one more thing that he had to put up with that he didn’t want to
put up with.
I held his other hand and watched the nurse work, and said the things you said in these situations-
you’re brave, almost done, it won’t hurt in a second-and felt completely useless.
After the IV was running, when Nick was reclined in the hospital bed with a cartoon playing on the
television mounted high on the wall, he said it.
“I want Mommy p>
I kept my face carefully neutral. “I know, buddy p>
“I want her to be here.” He was looking at the cartoon but not watching it, but looking at it, gave
him a reason to not look at me which was what he wanted.
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“She always comes when I’m sick. She sits next to my bed and puts the cloth on my head and she tells me about the time she got food poisoning on a school trip and it’s really funny and it makes
e not think about being sick.” He paused. “I don’t have anyone to tell me that story p>
“I could p>
“You don’t know it the way she tells it.” He pulled the hospital blanket up with his free hand, the V line limiting his range of motion as he hissed, pain coursing through him as he continued speaking, focusing on what he was saying.
she does different voices. She does the voice of the nurse at the school and she makes it really
funny p>
I didn’t push it.
“Why did she leave?” Nick asked. His voice was quiet but he’d turned to look at me now, really look at me, the same way Sedona did before.
Like they could look at something long enough to understand it. “She wouldn’t leave because of me, would she? Because of what I said p>
“No,” I said, because that much I was certain of-Sedona hadn’t left because of Nick.
“Because said some bad things,” Nick continued. “I said things I’m not supposed to say and Grandma said she was probably glad to leave because people who get called bad names don’t
to stay.” He hesitated. “But I don’t want her to go. I was just mad p>
Sherry. My mother had said that to him.
I breathed through the sharp edge of that for a moment before trusting myself to speak.
“What you said wasn’t the reason she left,” I said carefully. “Mom leaving had to do with adult things. Things that had nothing to do with you p>
“Then why can’t she come back p>
“I’m trying to find her p>
“She knows how to make the itching stop,” he said. “She always makes it stop. She figured it out. It took her a really long time but she kept trying and she said it was because nothing was going to make my skin worse if she had anything to say about it.” He scratched at the back of his hand, remembered the IV, stopped himself. “I want her here p>
“I know p>
“Doesn’t she love me anymore p>
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The question was even more direct than I’d expected, delivered in a tone of genuine uncertainty, like he was asking something he truly didn’t know the answer to and believed I might.
ought about what Brooke had told me. About the way Sedona had said goodbye. About Nick’s baby teeth left in their box. About the labels stitched into every suit I owned in her handwriting.
“She loves you,” I said. “She loves you more than anything. That has not changed p>
Nick looked at the ceiling, blinking. “Then why isn’t she here p>
I had no answer that would satisfy him. The truth was too large and too complicated and too full of my own failures to compress into something a six-year-old could hold. the truth was that i had belittled her and constantly treated her like a bore and unwanted in our family but she held on for as long as she could because she thought her marriage could be salvageable.
The truth was she was somewhere sick and alone-or not alone, but without us, which amounted to the same thing in my eyes –because she’d decided that leaving us was somehow better than making us watch her disappear.
I couldn’t tell him any of that.
“It’s complicated,” I said again, which was a coward’s answer and I knew it.
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