I’d never have been able to shave a half hour off that drive time like he did.
“Sepsis. So, the infection is in her blood.” I tried to recall everything I’d read over the last seven months, feeling like I’d just been thrown into the final exam for a class I hadn’t been aware I was taking. Her blood pressure was low, I knew that from the monitors, and her breathing had been a little labored coming in. Second stage. “Her organs?”
He got that look on his face. The one doctors got when they didn’t want to deliver bad news.
“Her organs?” I repeated, raising my voice. “She’s six weeks post-op, and the doctors spent twelve hours saving her kidney, so could you please tell me if that was all in vain?”
“We need to see how she reacts to the antibiotics.” His voice dropped into the soothe-the-mother-of-the-sick-patient tone.
Alarms as loud as church bells went off in my head, and my stomach dropped. “How worried do I need to be?”
“Very.”
He didn’t blink, didn’t soften his expression or his tone.
And that terrified me even more.
The next hour was a blur.
We were transferred to ICU, where we were admitted. They wristbanded me with Maisie’s information, and I nodded when they asked about Beckett, already digging through my binder for her history and insurance information.
Seeing as we were frequent-flyers at the affiliated cancer center, they had everything on file, so I could put the binder down. Until they started the IV antibiotics, then I picked it back up and started scrawling notes.
“Do we remove the line?” I asked the doctor, scanning his name tag. Dr. Peterson. Beckett moved to my side, quiet but solid.
The doctor scanned through his iPad before answering. “We need to weigh the pros and cons there. In the majority of cases, the line itself isn’t the danger, and if we remove it, you’re looking at the complications from inserting another one.”
“It goes straight to her heart.”
“Yes. But we’ve started aggressive antibiotics, and we’re monitoring her, especially her liquid input and output.”
“Kidney function,” I assumed.
He nodded. “We need to give the drugs a chance. If there’s no improvement, we’ll need to remove the line.”
“So for now we wait.”
“We wait.”
I nodded, muttered thanks, or something, and took the chair next to Maisie’s bed. Wait. Just wait. That was all I could do.
As usual, I was powerless, and my six-year-old daughter was fighting for her life. How was any of this fair? Why couldn’t it be me in that bed? With the IVs and the lines and the monitors? Why her?
“How about I grab us some coffee?” Beckett offered, halting my downward spiral.
“That would be great. Thank you.” I gave him a weak, forced smile, and he headed in search of caffeine.
The steady drip of her IV was my companion, the monitors letting out a comforting beep with each of her heartbeats. Her pressure was dangerously low, and I was quickly addicted to watching the screen as new measurements came in.
Wait. That was the course of action. Wait.
My phone rang, startling me, and I swiped it open to answer quickly when I saw Dr. Hughes’s name pop up as the contact.
“Dr. Hughes?” I answered.
“Hey, Ella. I got a call that Maisie was admitted in Montrose; how are you doing?” Her voice was a welcome breath of familiarity.
“Did they fill you in?”
“They did. I’m actually on my way in right now.”
“You’re here in Montrose? I thought you were in Denver for another week or so.” I flipped through the binder to find my calendar of when Dr. Hughes was scheduled.
“It’s Memorial Day weekend, so I came to spend the weekend with my parents.”
My relief at having her here was second only to my guilt. “I wouldn’t want you to give up your weekend.”
“Nonsense. I’ll be there in about a half hour. Besides, it gives me an excuse to get out of listening to my mom’s opinion on bridesmaid dresses. You’re doing me a favor, I promise.”
“You’re getting married?” How did I not know that?
“Six months to go,” she said, her smile shining through her voice. “I’ll be there soon, just hang tight.”
We hung up as Beckett walked in with a familiar white and green cup.
“You are a god among men,” I said, taking the cup and holding it between my hands, hoping some of the heat would transfer to my skin, would wake up my nerves. Numb seemed to be my default state lately.
“I’ll bring you coffee more often,” he promised, pulling up a matching chair to sit next to me. “How’s she doing?”
“No change. I’m not sure what I’m expecting. Instant results? Her to pop up and be magically healed from an infection I never saw? How did I not see it?”
“Because you’re not a walking blood test? You’ve got to be a little easier on yourself, Ella. If the doc said there was no way to see this coming, then you need to believe him. Beat yourself up about your choice of baseball teams, or the fact that you’re about two thousand miles overdue for an oil change, but not this.”
“What’s wrong with the Rockies?”
He shrugged. “Nothing if you like losing.”
“Hey, they’re the hometown team, and I’m not a fair-weather fan.”
“That’s what I love about you,” he said with a smile as he watched Maisie. “Your unwavering loyalty, even to a team that clearly sucks.”
“Just because you’re a Mets fan…” I motioned to the baseball cap he had on.
“Guilty as charged.” He looked at me and winked, and it became instantly clear: he’d distracted me from guilt-tripping myself.
I shook my head and sighed, grateful for the coffee and the split second I’d had to clear my head from going down the path of self-loathing that wouldn’t do Maisie any good.
“I’m scared.”
“I know.” His hand covered mine where it rested on my lap.
“This is bad.”
“Yes.” His simple acknowledgment meant more than any well-meaning platitude. With Beckett, I didn’t have to put on the brave face or smile when someone told me that they were sure Maisie would be okay when they really knew nothing of the sort. I could be horribly, bluntly honest with this man.
“I don’t want to bury my daughter.” I watched the rise and fall of her chest under the patterned hospital gown. “I don’t know how to plan for something like that, or even consider it. I don’t know how to look at Colt and tell him that his best friend…” My throat closed, denying the rest of my words the release they so desperately needed. I’d kept them inside for so long that they felt more powerful, like I’d fed the monster by keeping it hidden away.
Beckett squeezed my hand. Everything about him dwarfed me, including those long, strong fingers that held mine with such strength and care.
“From the moment they told me her odds, I refused to plan for that. Because planning for it felt like admitting defeat, like I’d already given up on her. So I didn’t. I simply refused to believe that could even be an option. And then…”
I closed my eyes as the memory slid over me, stabbing at me with a grief so sharp I should have visibly bled. Lowering his casket. The guns from the shore. The stern face of the soldier who had handed me a folded flag.
“Then I buried Ryan. What kind of God does that? Takes your only brother while toying with the thought of taking your daughter?”
Beckett’s thumb stroked over my knuckle, but he stayed quiet. There wasn’t anything he could say—we both knew it.
“Were you mad? When he died?” I asked, tearing my eyes away from Maisie to look at Beckett.
His focus shifted downward. “Furious.”
“With God,” I assumed.
“With myself. With every soldier in our unit who hadn’t saved him, taken that bullet. With the government for sending us there. With the…” He swallowed. “…insurgents who pulled the trigger. With everyone who lived after he died.”
“How did you get past it?” He was so calm, like the lake at five a.m. before a ripple of wind disturbed her surface.