Keep It, We Don't Need It Anymore novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Four
Wyatt scores Poppy's 106 degree fever a four and walks his assistant into the ER ahead of her, and when Poppy seizes on the waiting room floor Nina tells him to keep his scale; his text says: Logged. 4.
At two in the morning, the triage nurse at St. Anne's pressed a thermometer to my daughter's forehead and read it twice.
"A hundred and six point one," she said. "That's a Level Two. I'll get you a bed."
I had worked that desk for four years before I married. I knew the number before she said it.
My daughter lay against my chest in a wet bath towel, four years old and too hot to cry.
Her teeth chattered. Her eyes kept rolling up toward the ceiling lights.
Twenty minutes earlier I had called my husband from the driveway.
He has a scale for family emergencies. One to ten, and he only handles a seven or above himself.
Everything below that he passes to me.
In six years the scale had only ever applied to our daughter and me.
When his assistant got stomach cramps in the middle of an eight-figure merger meeting, he left the other side's lawyers sitting there and drove her to the ER himself.
That night he scored her a nine.
On the phone, I had read him our daughter's number and he went quiet.
"Text me the thermometer," he said. "I need it in writing."
So I stood in the dark with my baby burning on my shoulder and sent him the photo.
"That's a four," he said. "Kids get fevers, Nina. It's not worth a special trip. Give her Tylenol and a cool bath."
"It's a hundred and six."
"I'll see you in the morning."
He hung up.
Now my phone buzzed against Poppy's back. It was his assistant, Carissa.
"Wyatt says Poppy just has a little fever! Try not to panic, mama. I'm dropping off soup tomorrow."
I read it once and didn't answer.
The automatic doors opened, and my husband, Wyatt, walked in.
For one second I thought he had changed his mind.
He wore his charcoal coat. Carissa's purse hung from his shoulder, and his arm was around her waist.
She was bent forward with one hand on her stomach and her ponytail falling over her face.
I stared at them.
Wyatt saw me and did not slow down. He walked to the desk.
"My assistant has severe abdominal pain," he told the triage nurse. "She needs a bed immediately."
"Sir, take a seat," the nurse said. "There's a child ahead of her."
"Carissa is an eight."
"That isn't how we do it here."
The waiting room had gone quiet. A man with an ice pack on his wrist was watching. So was a woman holding a toddler.
"Wyatt," I said. "Look at your daughter."
He turned his head, finally, and looked at Poppy in the towel.
"She's breathing," he said. "That's a four."
Poppy's whole body went stiff against me.
Then her arms started to jerk.
"Seizure," I said, and my voice came out flat, the way it used to on shift. "Febrile. Help me."
I dropped to my knees and laid her on her side on the linoleum. I put my hand under her cheek.
Her lips were turning gray.
"I need a team out here!" the nurse shouted, and somebody was running.
Wyatt took one step back.
He did not kneel. He did not touch her.
"Go to her, Wyatt," Carissa said softly, still holding her stomach. "I'm fine, really. It's just pain."
"You are not fine," he said. "You're an eight."
He put his hand on her back and guided her toward the curtained bays.
I watched my husband walk away from our seizing child with another woman's purse on his shoulder.
The doors to the back burst open, and Dr. Jonas Berglund came through them at a run.
He had been my friend for three years before I left this building. I had not seen him in six.
"Nina?" he said. He dropped beside me and took Poppy's wrist. "How long?"
"Forty seconds. It's her first one."
"Good. Hold her head. We're taking her in."
Two nurses lifted her onto a gurney. The seizure was already easing, her fingers loosening one at a time.
I was running beside the gurney when Wyatt's voice stopped me at the door.
"Nina."
I turned around.
He stood at the curtain with his phone in his hand. His thumb was moving on the screen.
"Is she stable?" he asked. "Good. Then I'll be with Carissa in bay six. Text me an update when it's actually a seven."
Everyone in that room was looking at him.
I walked back across the waiting room. I took off my wedding ring and put it into the front pocket of his coat.
"Keep it," I said. "We don't need your scale anymore."
He opened his mouth.
I turned my back on him and followed my daughter through the doors.
They laid Poppy under the cooling blanket in trauma room two. Jonas started an IV while I held her hand, and the nurse called out the numbers, and every one of them was lower than the last.
At 2:31 my phone lit up on the counter.
It was Wyatt.
"Logged. 4. Call me when she's actually sick."
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