Chapter 16: Served at the Door

They sent us home on Wednesday, and my sister's apartment had not been built for a baby.

June had tried.

There was a sign taped inside her front door that said NO SHOES, NO PERFUME, NO BRETT.

There was a bassinet in the corner of her living room with a stuffed rabbit propped in it.

She had bought the rabbit on her way home from a night shift, and she had apologized for it.

"I didn't know what he'd like."

"He's three days old, June."

"I thought he might like a rabbit."

Theo, in my arms, looked at the rabbit with the open contempt of a person who had met better.

Dillon came at four, after a double shift, in a gray sweatshirt with his lanyard still clipped to the collar.

He was carrying a rotisserie chicken in one hand and a bag from the pharmacy in the other.

"Compliance visit," he said. "I'm here to check an incision."

"He's here to check an incision," June said, in the voice of a woman writing it down.

"Where do you want me, Millicent?"

"On the couch. Obviously."

I lay back with my shirt rolled up and the blanket over my knees.

He washed his hands in June's kitchen for a full minute.

He knelt, and I did not say anything about it this time.

He lifted the edge of the dressing and looked.

His face went careful and professional, and I watched it do that.

"Clean," he said. "Dry. You're healing like you're mad at it."

"I'm a little mad at it."

"Good. Don't lift anything heavier than him."

"What if he gets heavier?"

"Then you'll have to stop growing him."

June snorted from the armchair.

Dillon sat back on his heels and held out his arms, and I gave him Theo without thinking about it.

He held him low against his chest, one big hand spread across the whole of the small back.

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