***
The following afternoon, as Valerie works her way through all the paperwork and packing, she finds herself remembering the first time she left the hospital with Charlie, when he was just three days old. She has the same feeling of impending failure now, the fear that she will be revealed as a fraud once home alone with her child. The only thing that tempers her trepidation is Charlie’s palpable excitement as he skips through the halls, handing out illustrated cards he made for everyone last night. Everyone but Nick, that is, who is nowhere to be found.
Valerie keeps expecting him to show up, or at least call, and feels herself stalling, signing the discharge papers and loading the cart with their belongings as slowly as possible. At one point, Valerie even asks Leta, a matronly, soft-spoken nurse who has been with them since the beginning, if they should wait to see Dr. Russo before leaving.
“He’s off today, sugar,” Leta says, even more gently than usual, as if she’s worried the news will upset Valerie. “He signed the order last night.” She flips through Charlie’s chart as if looking for some consolation, smiling brightly when she finds it. “But he wants to see you back in a few days,” she says. “Call this number here,” she says, circling Nick’s office number on a form and handing it to her.
Embarrassed, Valerie takes the paper and looks away, wondering just how transparent she is, if all the nurses can tell how she feels, how close she and Nick have become. Or perhaps he is this way with all his patients and families—perhaps she has mistaken their friendship for a well-honed and finely tuned bedside manner. The thought that he is doing his job, that she and Charlie aren’t unique, fills her with relief and disappointment.
Valerie zips the last duffel bag as Leta bustles out of the room, returning a moment later with a wheelchair for Charlie’s final ride through these halls—and a lanky hospital page named Horace to do the pushing.
“I don’t need that anymore!” Charlie says with a happy shout.
“It’s hospital protocol, baby,” Leta says.
Charlie stares at her, confused.
“Everyone gets wheeled out, sweetie pie,” she tells him. “So hop aboard. Horace might pop a wheelie for you.”
Charlie makes a gurgling, happy boy noise and climbs into the chair as Valerie glances around the bare room, and gives her last, silent thank-you to a place she will never forget.
***
Charlie doesn’t ask about Nick until later that night when he is in his own bed, his artwork and cards from the hospital transferred to his honey-colored walls, his army of stuffed animals surrounding him, his iPod in the docking station, playing soft Beethoven.
“I never got to give Dr. Nick my card!” he says, suddenly sitting up. “I didn’t get to say good-bye.”
“We’ll see him again in a few days,” she says, easing him back onto his pillow and turning his night-light on.
“Can we call him?” Charlie says, his voice quivering.
“Not now, honey. It’s too late,” she says.
“Please,” he whimpers, reaching up to pull off his mask. “I want to say good night.”
Valerie knows what the answer should be, knows that there are a dozen things she could tell her son to distract him from the subject of Dr. Nick.
But instead she puts her hand in her pocket and pulls out her phone that she has kept near her all day and types a rapid text: We’re home. Everything good. Call if you can. Charlie wants to say good night.
She hits send, tells herself she is doing it for her child. She is doing it for her child.
Seconds later, the phone rings.
Valerie jumps. “It’s him!” she says, pressing the talk button and holding the phone up to Charlie’s ear.
“Hi, Dr. Nick,” Charlie says. “I didn’t get to say good-bye to you.”
Valerie strains to hear his response. “No need for good-byes, buddy. I’ll see you soon.”
“When?” Charlie asks.
“How about tomorrow? Ask your mom if you’re free?”
“Are we free tomorrow, Mommy?” Charlie asks.
“Yes,” Valerie answers quickly.
Nick says something else that she can’t make out and Charlie hands her the phone. “He wants to talk to you, Mommy,” he says, replacing his mask before yawning and closing his eyes.
She takes the phone and says, “Hi, there . . . I’m sorry to bother you . . . on your day off . . . at night. . .”
“Stop it,” Nick says. “You know I love when you call... I really wanted to come by today . . . I miss you. I miss you both.”
Valerie walks out of the room, leaving Charlie’s door open a crack, and whispers in the hall, “We miss you, too.”
Silence crackles over the phone as Valerie makes her way to her own bed. “Is it too late now?” he finally says.
“Now?” she asks, confused.
“Can I stop by for a minute? Take a peek at him?”
Valerie closes her eyes and catches her breath long enough to tell him yes. Long enough to tell herself, for the hundredth time, that they are friends. Just friends.