Chapter 11: Six Hours

They had Timmy on a rolling bed outside the operating room doors, with a paper cap on his head.

He looked tiny.

He looked like a drawing of a boy.

"Mom," he said, very slow. "Where's Dane?"

I leaned close and smoothed the cap.

"He's not here right now, baby."

"He didn't say no."

"I know."

"Is he coming?"

I didn't know how to answer, so I kissed his forehead.

When I straightened, Dane was at the end of the hall.

He had been standing there the whole time, in the same shirt he'd put on in the dark.

I didn't call him.

I lifted my hand.

He came down the hall slowly.

"Two minutes," I said. "Then you go."

He stopped at the side of the bed.

Timmy rolled his eyes up. They were glassy from the medicine, and still gray.

"You didn't say no," Timmy told him.

"I know. I didn't say anything. I'm sorry."

"Are you mad?"

"No. I'm not mad at you. I'm scared."

"Me too," Timmy said.

Dane laid one finger on the little crescent mark on Timmy's thumb.

"I'll be right outside," he said, and his voice broke. "The whole time. Just outside the door."

"Okay."

Then the nurse said it was time, and they wheeled him through the doors.

Dane didn't say a word to me.

He took a seat at the far end of the waiting room, as far from mine as the room allowed.

I let him.

For the first hour no one spoke.

Bev knitted something yellow and shapeless.

Dane held a coffee he never drank.

He kept looking at his own left hand, turning it over on his knee.

At the end of the second hour the door opened and Ingrid walked in with Demi's father beside her.

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