sound melodramatic.”
“You shouldn’t dwell on the worst-case scenario.”
“You always dwell on the worst-case scenario when you’re a single parent.”
There was a heartbeat’s silence before he answered. “You’re not a single parent anymore, remember.”
“No, I’m not. Not anymore,” she whispered.
Matty frowned in his sleep, then he raised his little fists and rubbed his eyes. “Mommy,” he called, sitting up, looking around with an unfocused stare. He began to sob, caught up in a bad dream.
“Shhh, baby,” she crooned, pulling him close. “I’m right here.”
Sarah didn’t need a child psychologist to tell her why Matty was suddenly having nightmares. His whole world had been turned upside down. He didn’t understand the gravity of her condition, at least she prayed he didn’t, but he knew something was wrong and the uncertainty of his new life scared him.
“He goes right back to sleep if you rock him,” she whispered to Nate. Matty had stuck his thumb in his mouth as he snuggled tight against her. “Just take his thumb out of his mouth when you put him back down.” She heard the quaver in her voice and fell silent.
“I’ll remember,” Nate said, and the words sounded like a promise. “Do you want me to hold him?”
She shook her head. She knew his suggestion made sense, but she couldn’t let go of her baby. Not now, not even for a little while. There were so many things to teach Nate about Matty but she couldn’t trust her voice any longer. “I need to hold him.”
“Why don’t you try to sleep? I’ll wake you at four. Mom will be here to watch over him so we can leave by four-forty-five.” Her surgery was scheduled for seven but they needed to check into the hospital an hour earlier.
“All right.” She laid Matty down on his pillow and curled up beside him. She closed her arms around him and felt the quick, light beat of his heart against hers.
Nate stepped into the room and pulled the sheet over them both. He didn’t say anything more, urge her to sleep, or wish her pleasant dreams. It would have been a waste of breath. But she thought she felt the merest brush of his fingers in her hair, and then he was gone and she was alone with her son in her arms.
IT HAD BEEN the longest day of his life and that included those he’d spent in battle, Nate thought, watching the last of the orange and gray sunset fade from the night sky. He turned away from the window. He and his parents were alone in the waiting room.
It was small and tucked away at the end of a long hall.
The kind of room they put you in to give you bad news.
“What time is it?” Arlene asked, looking up from the magazine she’d been pretending to read for the last half hour.
“Almost six,” Tom responded. Nate had thought his father was asleep he’d been quiet for so long, his long legs crossed at the ankles, his chin resting on his chest, as he sat slouched in a brown tweed chair.
His parents had shown up at the hospital about an hour after Sarah’s surgery had started. “I know I promised Sarah we’d watch look after Matty,” Arlene told him with the stubborn look on her face that all of her children had learned at an early age not to argue with. “He’ll do fine with Joann and the boys. You need us more than he does right now.” They hadn’t left his side for a moment since.
“Only six o’clock and it’s dark already,” Arlene sighed.
“It’ll be dark even earlier when daylight savings time ends.” Tom straightened from his slouched position and stretched his arms over his head. He was a couple of inches taller than Nate, although they favored each other in looks.
Arlene dropped the magazine and stood up, walking to the door and looking out into the hallway. “How much longer do you think it will be?”
Nate shrugged. “Six to eight hours. That’s what the surgeon said.”
“And the surgery started at noon?”
“Yes,” he answered patiently. It was the third time she’d asked.
He and Sarah had arrived at the pre-op suite right at six. But from then on nothing had gone as planned. The doctor was in surgery, an emergency, an apologetic nurse had informed them. Sarah’s operation had been moved back on the schedule. There was a room they could wait in, she’d explained, while Sarah filled out forms. She knew what Sarah was facing and she did her best to put them at ease.
Later another nurse had taken Sarah away to undress and change into a hospital gown, leaving him to cool his heels in the windowless cubbyhole of a room. He stared at the gauges and tubing affixed to the wall above the empty space where Sarah’s bed would be. Oxygen, blood pressure cuff, monitors that he couldn’t read. He switched his gaze to the TV and pretended to watch the early morning weather report. A few minutes later they brought Sarah in. She looked small and lost in the high bed with its stark white sheets and pillowcase. She wore a worn-looking white surgical gown and her hair was hidden beneath a paper cap.
“They didn’t shave my head if that’s what you’re wondering,” she said with a ghost of the smile that still had the power to make his heart beat harder. “The incision will be here.” She touched the back of her neck.
The nurse started an IV and gave Sarah the first of her pre-op medication. A few minutes later she seemed to doze off. Nate stared at the TV and the clock, not paying attention to the one and wondering if the other was broken since the hands didn’t seem to move. Nurses came and went with more medication for the IV. Sarah woke up and turned her head to look at him. “I forgot to tell you,” she said, swallowing against the dryness in her mouth. They’d probably given her atropine to do that. Nate knew more about pre-op medications than he wanted to. “Matty wants to be Shrek for Halloween. He’s excited about it. Do you think you can find a costume for him?”
Nate stood up and walked over to the high bed. He leaned both hands on the rails the nurse had put up when she started the IV. “I’ll make sure he has a Shrek costume,” he promised.
The answer seemed to please her. A faint smile curved her mouth and her words took on a dreamy tone. “Spoken like a true father. See, I told you you’d be good at the daddy thing. Thank you, Nate. For everything.”
He’d reached down to take her hand in his at the same moment the surgeon appeared in the doorway. She was young, with chocolate-colored skin, a serious demeanor, and an excellent reputation in her field. “It’s time to go,” she’d said.
Sarah’s fingers tightened around his. “Try to learn to love him, Nate. That’s all I ask.”
His last words to her were spoken directly from his heart. “I won’t have to try at all.”
“Someone’s coming.” Arlene’s voice broke into his thoughts. She took a couple of steps backward into the waiting room and turned to face him. “Is Sarah’s doctor a very pretty, young black woman?”
“Yes. Dr. Jamison.” He curled his hands around the back of one of the brown tweed chairs so his parents couldn’t see them tremble.
Tom rose, too, as the neurosurgeon entered the room. She was wearing rose-colored scrubs and green surgical booties, her short, dark hair still covered by a white paper cap like the one they’d put on Sarah. She carried a clipboard and a large envelope in her hands, looking down at her notes as she walked. Nate searched her face for signs of the bad news he was certain she’d come to deliver. She looked up and saw them watching her, and smiled.
Not the polite curve of her generous mouth that Nate had seen earlier, but a real smile that reached her eyes and banished the weariness from her face. “I’ve got good news,” she said. Nate had been preparing himself for the worst, and if he hadn’t been watching her so closely he would have thought he’d heard her wrong. “The surgery was a complete success.