Keep It, We Don't Need It Anymore novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Declined

Wyatt freezes the cards while Poppy is still in the hospital, Jonas covers the deposit, and in front of the staff Nina tells Wyatt she is leaving; her aunt says he already called.

I did not answer the text.

I turned the phone face down on the counter and kept my hand on my daughter's ankle.

Her fever came down through the night. At four it was 102, and at six it was 100.4.

She woke once and asked for her rabbit. I told her it was at home and that I would get it soon.

Jonas came by at dawn, still in last night's scrubs.

"Simple febrile seizure," he said. "Viral. Her bloods are clean and her neck is soft."

"I know," I said. "I checked."

"Of course you did." He almost smiled. "Another twenty minutes at home in that heat and I'd be telling you something harder."

"I know that too."

He looked at the empty chair on the other side of the bed.

"Where's her father?"

"In bay six," I said. "Last I saw."

Jonas did not say anything. A muscle moved in his jaw.

He wrote Poppy's discharge orders himself and signed every line.

At one in the afternoon a volunteer wheeled Poppy to the front desk in a chair too big for her. She held a stuffed hospital bear and a sticker that said BRAVE.

The clerk slid a form toward me.

"There's a hospital deposit before we release her," she said. "Three thousand on the card, and the rest gets billed."

I had never once been asked for a deposit at this hospital. Wyatt's insurance had always handled it.

I put our joint card on the counter.

The clerk ran it. She ran it again.

"I'm sorry. It's declined."

"Try the other one."

She tried the other one. The machine made the same flat sound.

My phone buzzed. I turned it over.

"Score: 2. Come home. Carissa made soup."

I read it standing at a hospital desk with my sick child in a borrowed chair.

He had frozen every account while Poppy was still on an IV.

Behind me, a man cleared his throat.

"Put it on mine," Jonas said.

He had come up quietly. He set his own card on the counter and did not look at me.

"Jonas, no."

"Three thousand's a deposit, Nina. It's not a loan." He tapped the card. "Run it."

The clerk ran it. It went through.

My eyes stung, and I was furious about that. I had not cried in front of Wyatt in six years, and I was not going to start in a lobby.

"Thank you," I said.

"Thank me by taking the stairs slowly with that kid."

The sliding doors opened.

Wyatt walked in with a bouquet of white roses and Carissa half a step behind him.

He looked rested. His tie was straight.

Carissa carried a thermos in both hands and a tote bag with Poppy's rabbit sticking out of the top.

"There she is," Wyatt said, loud enough for the whole lobby. "There's my family."

Heads turned. A nurse at the end of the desk stopped writing.

He crossed to me and held out the roses.

"You've had a rough night," he said. "Your account's been frozen because you were upset, that's all. I'll fix it from the car. Let's go home."

"You froze it at four this morning," I said. "I have the text."

"You're exhausted."

"You walked past her while she was seizing."

"I walked past you while you were hysterical." He said it kindly, with a small sad smile for the room. "Carissa was in real pain. You know how I handle things."

"Seven or above," I said.

"Exactly."

Carissa stepped forward and offered Poppy the rabbit.

Poppy took it with both arms and pressed her face into it.

"I packed her bag," Carissa told me, warm and quiet. "I figured you'd come straight here without anything. I just wanted to help."

I should have said something about how she knew which bag I had left behind.

I looked at Poppy's hands wrapped around the rabbit and said nothing.

Wyatt noticed Jonas then.

He turned and looked at the card still lying on the counter, then at Jonas's hand beside it.

"Dr. Berglund," he said. "Very generous. I'll have my office reimburse you."

"Don't," Jonas said.

"A courtesy like that is a seven, and I don't like owing a seven." He smiled. "I'll have it by Friday."

Then he took my left hand and turned it over.

My ring finger was bare.

His smile stayed exactly where it was, but he went still.

He reached into his coat, took out my wedding ring, and held it up between two fingers.

"You dropped this."

"I didn't drop it."

"Put it on, Nina."

"I'm leaving you," I said.

I said it plainly and not loudly. The lobby heard every word.

The clerk. The volunteer. The man with the ice pack, who had come back for a recheck and was standing by the vending machines.

"Where would you go?" Wyatt asked. "The cards are mine. The car is in my name. Your friends are my friends."

"I'll go where I can take her."

"Poppy lives in our house."

"Poppy is going where she's safe."

I took the handles of the chair myself. Poppy held her rabbit and looked from his face to mine.

I did not take the roses, the soup, or the ring.

I wheeled her out through the doors into the cold and buckled her into my old sedan, the one with my mother's name still on the registration.

Then I drove to the only house in the state I could think of where nobody scored anything.

It was a small bungalow in St. Paul with a crooked porch light.

My aunt Marit opened the door before I knocked. She was wearing her apron, and she did not look surprised.

"Come in, honey," she said. "He called here at six this morning. He knew you'd come."

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