The next day, Dr Schaffer informed me that there was little reason to keep Aiden in the hospital. Aside from the old injury on his ankle, there was nothing wrong with him. His growth had been somewhat stunted, but otherwise, he was healthy. I would be taking him home tomorrow.
That Saturday disappeared in a blur as I rushed back to the house, made up the bed in the spare room, and placed the one stuffed toy I’d allowed myself to keep after I declared my son dead. It was a small, soft dragon with red scales that shimmered when the light hit them. My mum had given it to Aiden when he was a baby, representing her Welsh ancestry. I placed it on the pillow and folded the bedding around it to make it look like it had been tucked in. It was silly, but I used to do that when he was a toddler. Then I took the clothes from the shopping bags around the room and folded them into the drawers. Poor Jake had given me his credit card to use and I had gone a little wild, trying to somehow make up for Aiden’s ten years of hell with expensive jeans.
At one point I dug out a couple of pieces of his artwork and tacked them to the wall. Then I thought better of it and pulled them down again. Aiden wasn’t a little boy anymore. The dragon, though—that had to stay. He had never slept without it when he was little. He needed to know I remembered.
The next morning I woke with butterflies in my stomach at the thought of bringing my son home. With it being a Sunday, Jake was off from work, of course, but I suggested he give us the day to settle in. He agreed, eager to do what was best for Aiden, and, I think, a little guilty about the way he’d reacted in the hospital.
Rob picked me up to take me to the hospital, driving his dad’s car. We’d decided that it would be too much for Sonya and Peter to be there. We wanted to keep this simple and quiet. There was the threat of the press looming above us. They would find out soon, we were certain of that, but how much, and when? That axe was yet to fall.
“Are you ready?” Rob asked as I pulled the seatbelt across my body.
“Are you?” I replied.
He’d rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, and I noticed the hint of a tattoo peeking out from underneath the sleeve. It was black, with a slight tail looping down.
“A dragon?” I asked.
“Like Aiden’s,” he replied.
“I found it and put it on his bed.”
“He never slept without it,” Rob said.
“I know.” I pressed my finger into the corner of my eye and tried hard to stop the tears building up. “No, I’m not ready for this. But I won’t let it show. I won’t.”
“It’s all right, Em. You’re doing a good job. Fuck, you’re doing better than I am. And you have the…” He glanced at my belly.
“The baby? It’s fine, she’s not the elephant in the room. You can mention her.”
“She? So Aiden will have a little sister. That’s great. It’ll be great for him.”
“I hope so.”
Rob was quiet for the rest of the journey, and I couldn’t help but wonder what was going through his mind. After a few minutes I gave up and thought of Aiden. There was a nervous tickling in my stomach as we pulled into the hospital carpark. It was early October and the leaves of the old sycamore trees on the edge of the paved area were turning amber and gold. Low-hanging mist obscured the autumn colours and blurred through the parked cars. The windscreen wipers squeaked across the glass, smearing fine rain into milky streaks.
“So what’s he like?” Rob asked as he unclipped his seatbelt.
I gave him a look as if to say ‘Who?’ With Aiden in hospital I’d spent a fair bit of time with Rob, and I was already allowing myself to relax. I remembered giving Rob that look a hundred times when we were together. He’d always tested my patience, but at one time that had felt like a good thing, an exciting thing.
“Hewitt.”
“Supportive,” I said. “Reliable. A good husband. He’ll be a great dad.”
“Better than me, then.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” I said in a raspy voice, struggling with the door to the Ford. “Does it matter? Fucking grow up, Rob. You weren’t there, I moved on. I’m happy, all right? What’s done is done and it doesn’t matter anyway. None of it does. Aiden is all that matters now.” I let go of the door handle and sighed. “So can you deal with this? Can you work through your pathetic issues and be a man? Be a dad? Because if you can’t, then turn around and drive out of this carpark right now and never come back into Aiden’s life. He needs stability and he needs love. It’s not an either/or situation here. I need you to give him both.”
Rob held his hands up in surrender. “All right, all right. I know, okay. I know he needs that from me. I’m going to be there for you both. I promise.”