He Missed Our Daughter's Birthday Again novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Lady With the Bump

Leah brings Sammy a drawing, finds Celia kind and Sammy funny, and learns Roderick has promised the boy Saturday morning, the same day as the carousel.

I went to the hospital the next morning, because I didn't want to hate a six-year-old without seeing him.

Junie had made him a drawing.

It was a purple horse with seven legs, and she said the extra legs were for speed.

My sister drove me and waited in the car with her arms crossed.

"Fifteen minutes," she said. "Then I come in and get you, and I won't be polite."

The children's cancer floor had fish painted along the walls.

At the end of the hall a woman stood up from a plastic chair as I came toward her.

Celia Barrow was thinner than her photographs.

She had dark hair scraped back and a cardigan with the sleeves pushed up past her wrists.

She hadn't slept properly in a year, and I felt the anger I'd carried up the elevator go soft in spite of me.

"Leah," she said. "You came."

"I brought a drawing."

"Oh." Her eyes filled. "He'll love that. Please, sit, you shouldn't be on your feet."

She pulled a chair out for me and went down the hall and came back with a cup of water and a folded blanket for my back.

She was kind.

It would have been easier if she weren't.

"I owe you an apology," she said. "I know what yesterday cost you. I almost didn't text, and then he went gray and they said they didn't have much time."

"Is he in danger now?"

"He's stable. The relapse was in the spring, and they've run out of the easy options."

"What are the hard ones?"

"A transplant," she said. "From family. A match."

She said it quietly, and then she looked at my stomach and quickly away.

"I'm not asking Roderick for anything he doesn't want to give."

"You don't have to," I said. "He'll give it."

"That's what I'm afraid of. For you."

She went and checked the room and came back.

"He's awake. He doesn't like quiet, so be prepared."

The room was a small one with a window onto the parking structure.

Sammy sat up against two pillows with a paper whistle in his mouth, and he blew it at me the moment I came in.

He was bald and pale, with enormous gray eyes in a very small face.

"You're the lady with the bump," he said.

"I'm Leah."

"Is the bump a boy or a girl?"

"A boy."

"Good. We need more boys. Mom says girls are smarter but I say that's rude."

I laughed before I could stop myself.

"My daughter made you something."

I gave him the horse.

He studied it for a long time, turning it sideways.

"Why does it have seven legs?"

"For speed."

"That's smart," he said seriously. "I want to meet her."

"She turned five on Friday."

"Is that the party Dad missed?"

The room went quiet except for the pump on his IV stand.

I looked at Celia.

"I didn't tell him that," she said, very low. "He heard the nurses."

"Dad says it's okay," Sammy said. "He says he'll make it up to her. He says he'll be here Saturday morning, for my big needle day, and then he'll go and do the horse thing."

"The carousel," I said.

"Yes! The horses that go up and down."

I kept my face steady, because a child was watching it.

"What time is the needle day?"

"Nine," Celia said. "They said it could run long. Roderick said he would be there for the start, only the start. He didn't mention the carousel."

"I'm sure he didn't."

Sammy flipped the drawing over to look at the back and set it carefully on his tray.

There was a stuffed rabbit propped against the pillow beside him.

It was as tall as he was, with a blue ribbon and floppy ears.

It was the same rabbit Roderick's father had carried into our house on Friday.

I looked at it a long moment.

"That's a nice rabbit."

"A man left it at the desk," Celia said quickly. "The nurses said it was a donation. Some volunteer, I think. We get a lot of them."

"There must be a lot of those rabbits."

"I suppose there are."

Sammy hugged it against his side.

"I named him Mr. Pickle," he said. "Dad says that's a very good name."

I looked at him, a little boy with a paper whistle and a drawing of a seven-legged horse.

I could not find one thing in that room to hate.

The door opened behind me, and I heard Roderick's voice from the hall, speaking to a doctor.

"I'll be at the start," he was saying. "Nine o'clock Saturday. I'll move whatever I have to."

I stood up.

He came around the corner and saw me and stopped.

"Leah."

"Nine o'clock Saturday," I said.

His face changed.

"I can explain."

"The carousel opens at ten."

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