Chapter 5: The Box Marked None

On Tuesday morning Sadie's ear had swollen shut, and Lorcan drove us to the Janeway without being asked.

He sat in the waiting room with a plastic clipboard on his knee and filled in the form while I held her.

I watched him write her name.

Sadie Hann Dwyer, in his square left-handed capitals.

He had put the Hann first without asking me, and I let it stand.

Date of birth.

Allergies.

Then a box near the bottom that said FAMILY HISTORY: HEART CONDITIONS, SUDDEN DEATH BEFORE AGE FIFTY.

His pen stopped over the box.

His jaw went tight enough that a muscle jumped under his ear.

He wrote NONE in the box, and he pressed so hard the pen went through to the next page.

"Lorcan?" I said.

"Hm."

"Your father."

"His heart was bad," he said. "That's all it was. Bad luck."

He handed the clipboard to the nurse before I could say anything else.

The paediatrician was a tired young woman with a ponytail.

She looked in Sadie's ear and said it was a textbook infection.

She wrote a ten-day course of pink medicine.

"She's a strong baby," the doctor said. "Listen to those lungs."

Sadie had been screaming at her for a full minute.

Lorcan stood against the wall with his arms folded and looked at his daughter the entire time.

By nine that night the medicine was in her and she was asleep.

She lay flat on her back in the white crib with one fist up beside her head.

I set the monitor on the shelf above the bathroom sink and turned it low.

Then I turned on the shower.

He was in the doorway when I stepped under the water.

"Rule two," he said.

"Come here."

He took his clothes off in the bedroom light and stepped in behind me.

The shower was a walk-in with grey slate walls and a rain head set into the ceiling.

A long stone bench ran along the back.

Hot water poured over both of us.

I turned in the spray and put my hands on his chest.

I got as far as his collarbone before I felt him go still.

I moved my hands to his shoulders instead.

I soaped them.

I soaped his neck, and his broad back, and the long muscles on either side of his spine.

He leaned one forearm on the slate and let his head hang while I worked.

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