Seven Times They Chose Him. The Last Time, They Lost Me novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Cone

His mother arrives three hours late holding the dog's cone, and a hospital social worker asks Zack where he wants to sleep tonight.

They put me in a curtained bay with a warm blanket and an X-ray tech who told me my arm was broken in two places.

"Both bones in the forearm," he said. "You'll get a cast up to the elbow. Does it hurt?"

"A little, thank you."

He glanced at the nurse, and she wrote something down.

I said thank you to the tech, to the nurse, to the man who brought the blanket, and to the woman who asked me to rate my pain from one to ten.

I said two.

Aunt Dot, in the chair beside my bed, said, "He means a seven."

"It's a two."

"Zack."

"A four," I said. "Maybe."

She nodded, and wrote it down.

At 10:40 the curtain was pushed aside and my mother walked in.

She had her coat open and her hair stuck to her neck, and she was holding the plastic cone from Waffle's neck in one hand.

"There he is," she said. "Oh, honey, what did you do to yourself?"

She hugged me on the side with the good arm.

She smelled like the vet's office.

"The nurse called, I was so scared. But listen, Waffle is going to be fine. They had to go in and take out the foam, and there was paper in there too, can you believe it? She's staying overnight."

"I'm glad she's okay," I said.

I was, too.

"Janine," Aunt Dot said.

My mother turned her head.

Her face did something fast, a flinch and then a smile, and I watched her decide which one to keep.

"Dorothea. What are you doing here?"

"I'm the one who brought him."

"From my house? Without calling me?"

"I called you twice from the car," Aunt Dot said. "You were in surgery with a dog."

"It was an emergency."

"So was this."

My mother set the cone on the bed beside my foot, very gently.

"I don't want a scene in a children's hospital," she said, in the voice she uses for the Hearts for Dylan page. "Zack is tired. He gets overtired. He's always been our easy one, and he tends to, you know, catastrophize."

"Do I?" I asked.

I wanted to know.

"Honey, nobody is saying you did anything wrong."

A woman in a gray cardigan had come to stand at the edge of the curtain.

She had a lanyard that said Social Work, and she held a clipboard against her chest.

I hadn't seen how long she'd been there.

"Mrs. Houghton? I'm sorry to interrupt. I heard you say you'd been at the vet's for several hours."

"Our dog was very sick."

"Of course." The woman's voice was calm. "And Zack's father?"

My phone rang in the nurse's tray with a picture of my dad on it, grinning in a Mickey hat.

My mother put it on speaker before anyone could stop her.

"Hey, buddy! Happy birthday!" Dad shouted over music and kids screaming. "Mom says you took a little spill. Tough guy. We're on a ride line, I can't hear anything, we'll call you back tomorrow, okay? Don't make a big thing out of it."

"Okay, Dad," I said.

The line went dead.

Nobody in the bay said anything.

"He's a very busy man," my mother said. "He's with Dylan."

The social worker looked at my mother, and then she looked at me, very kindly.

"Zack, could I ask you something while your mom signs some forms? It's just the two of us."

My mother said, "Of course," and the way she said it meant no.

She went with the nurse to the front desk, and her heels went all the way down the hall.

The social worker pulled the chair around and sat so her eyes were level with mine.

"I'm not going to ask you whether you're okay," she said. "I think we both know what you'd say."

I didn't answer.

"I'll ask a different question. When you leave here tonight, where would you like to sleep?"

I looked at the ceiling.

It was a real question, and nobody had asked me one like it before.

"Wherever Mom says," I said.

"That isn't what I asked."

"I know."

Aunt Dot didn't say a word.

I could tell it cost her.

I looked at my hands on the blanket, the cast not on yet, the good one folded over the broken one.

"At my aunt's house," I said. "Please."

"Thank you for telling me," the social worker said. "I'll write that down exactly the way you said it."

"My mom is going to be upset."

"I'm sure she will be."

"She doesn't like it when we're upset."

"I know, sweetheart."

She stood up.

"Tonight I'm recommending Zack stays with his aunt," she told Aunt Dot quietly. "I'll be calling both homes this week."

My mother came back a minute later, digging through her bag for the insurance card.

She set her phone down on my tray table, face up, and turned her back to look under the chair.

The screen was lit, and a message to my father was half typed on it.

The first line said, Do NOT tell Dylan about this.

The second said, Dot put him up to it, I know she did.

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