Chapter 9: Two in the Morning

"Yes," Vaughn said to my son. "I'm the one who left."

Sam waited.

"I left your mama before I knew about you. I didn't know you were coming."

"Is that why?"

"It's not an excuse. I should have known her better. I'm trying to now."

Sam turned the bear over in his hands.

"Are you going to leave again?"

"No."

"Even if I'm gross when I'm sick?"

"Especially then."

Sam nodded once, handed him the bear to hold, and walked back to bed on his own.

I stood in the kitchen and did not trust my legs.

That was the first week.

By the second, my son's blood counts had begun to fall.

I watched the numbers like a nurse and felt them like a mother.

He slept sixteen hours a day.

He bruised from the touch of a seat belt.

Vaughn took him to every appointment, and sat in every waiting room, and never once looked at his phone.

He learned that Sam hated the nurse's cherry syrup.

He carried a bag of plain crackers in his coat.

Sam would only let a person hold his hand during a blood draw if they counted backward from ten.

He counted in a low voice, and he got to zero a little late every time.

I let myself watch him from the doorway, and I hated that I did.

On the fourteenth night I could not sleep.

At two in the morning I gave up and went to the kitchen in a T-shirt and bare feet.

The lights were off.

I filled a glass at the sink and stood with my hip against the counter.

The lab had called that afternoon.

Sam's platelets were twelve.

The doctor had said the number gently.

Then she had said the word "fragile," and it had been in the room with me ever since.

I stared at the dark window and I tried to be a nurse.

I could not.

A shape moved in the hallway.

Vaughn came in wearing gray sweatpants and a plain white shirt, his hair rumpled.

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