Chapter 2 — Three Years Later
1443 Words
Mara:
"Dr. Quinn."
I was already walking when Nurse Adaeze walked beside me. She had the chart and her voice was urgent. This meant something had changed in the last ten minutes.
"Fever spiked to 39.4. Parents are asking for you specifically."
I took the chart without breaking stride, my eyes scanning the fluctuating vitals of Room Seven. A four-year-old post-op patient, presenting a secondary infection far more aggressively than expected.
I processed the numbers in a second, handed the file back to Adaeze, and pushed through the door. The heavy scent of antiseptic and fear greeted me as the parents immediately rose to their feet, a universal reflex I'd grown used to over the last three years, a desperate silent plea to the person holding their child’s life in her hands.
Their son was small against the white pillow, flushed and restless, pulling at his IV line with the determined irritation of a child who had decided he was done with it.
"Hey," I said, to him first. I always talk to the child first. "I hear you've been giving my nurses a hard time."
He stopped pulling at the line and looked at me with suspicious eyes.
I examined him, spoke to the parents in the calm, even voice I had trained myself into over three years, adjusted the medication protocol, and was back in the corridor four minutes later with new instructions for Adaeze.
"Increase the antibiotic frequency and watch the temperature. If it hits 40 before six o'clock, call me directly."
"Yes, doctor."
I was already at the next door.
- - -
The hospital daycare was on the first floor at the end of the wing. It was a spot away from all the noise.
Rowan’s voice carried through the daycare door before I even touched the handle. He wasn’t crying, he was in the middle of an animated story involving dragons and explosions, met with a chorus of toddler arguments. The moment I pushed the door open, a small streak of energy launched down the hallway and collided straight into me.
His arms were wrapped tight around me. He wasn't sorry at all. I took the hit. Put one arm around him. Then I looked across the room.
Ava was sitting at a table with a piece of paper in front of her. She looked up when I came in. Then she picked up her drawing with both hands. She stood up, and walked slowly across the room.
She stopped in front of me and waited.
I got down on one knee with Rowan holding on to me. Ava held out her drawing. It had two people in it. One was tall. One was small. They were standing in front of something. It could have been a building or a fire.
"That's me and you," she said.
"I know, " I said. "I can tell it's us."
Ava scrutinized my expression, searching for a lie with that unsettling, quiet focus of hers. Satisfied, she nodded, tucking the paper securely under her arm. Within minutes, I had them signed out, their tiny backpacks slung over my shoulders, and a warm, small hand anchored in each of mine.
- - -
We took the park route home.
It was Rowan's idea. He said it like it was a fact, somewhere between the hospital entrance and the car park, and I agreed because the afternoon was cool and I wasn't ready to be inside yet.
The park was busy. There were people walking dogs, jogging and parents sitting on benches watching their kids on the play equipment. Rowan pulled at my hand with the focused energy of someone who had been stationary for six hours and had opinions about it. Ava walked beside me with her drawing still under her arm.
It happened fast.
Ava drifted slightly left to avoid a bench and bumped into a man coming from the opposite direction. Light contact, the kind that happens a hundred times a day in a busy park. She stumbled back and looked up.
The man's hand shot out and grabbed her wrist.
"Watch where you're going, " he said.
He didn't say it out loud. Not loud enough for people around us to look up. He just said it like a man who was bothered by a kid. He tightened his fingers on her wrist.
Rowan let go of my hand.
He stepped between Ava and the man with the straight-spined certainty of someone twice his height, and something happened to the air.
I felt it before I saw it, a sudden, violent drop in atmospheric pressure that made my ears pop, like the heavy, suffocating silence right before a thunderstorm rips the sky open.
The stranger’s hand instantly released Ava’s wrist as if he’d been burned. His paper coffee cup slipped from his fingers, splashing dark liquid across the concrete. Three meters away, a massive German Shepherd dropped flat onto its belly, whimpering as it pressed its snout into the grass.
On the bench to my left, a woman's head came up sharply. She scanned the park with a kind of alertness.
Not human. Lyra catalogued it in under a second.
The man stared at Rowan. His face had gone the particular grey of someone whose body had responded to something before their mind caught up.
I moved.
I stepped forward, got my hand on Rowan's shoulder, crouched to Ava's level and checked her wrist with steady fingers.
Not even red. I picked her up, straightened, and looked at the man once.
He took a step back.
“Have a good evening," I said.
I turned and walked. Even pace, one hand on Rowan's back and Ava on my hip. I kept my voice easy when Rowan started talking, something about how the man had been rude and he hadn't liked it and I agreed with him and asked him what he wanted for dinner and kept walking until the park gates were behind us.
Then I crossed the street. I turned into the alley between our building and the next one then stopped.
I pressed my back against the brick. I breathed.
Ava rested her head on my shoulder. She was still. Like she was waiting for me to settle.
Rowan looked up at me. His face was older than it should have been on a two year old.
"Mama, " he said. "That man was scared of me."
I crouched down to his level. His eyes were steady. He was watching mine.
"Yes, " I said. "He was."
He thought about it. "I didn't mean to scare him."
"I know you didn't. You were protecting your sister. That was the right thing to do.”
He nodded. He accepted it. Then he straightened up. "I want pasta for dinner," he said, and the moment was over.
- - -
I put the kids to bed at half past seven.
Rowan really wanted to hear another story so he kept asking until I said yes. He doesn't give up easily. Ava put her drawing on the nightstand making sure it was just right.
I sat between their beds in the dark and waited for their breathing to even out.
When they were asleep I stood up slowly.
"Mama " Rowan said, with his eyes still closed.
"Sleep, " I told him.
"I know," he said simply and did.
- - -
In the kitchen I poured a glass of water and stood at the window and watched the street below. The park played back through my mind on a loop. The pressure dropped. The dog going flat. The woman on the bench with that look on her face.
Rowan was two years old.
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
I looked at it for two rings, three, and then I answered because I was a doctor and unknown numbers at night were not something I ignored.
A heavy, dead silence stretched across the line. My thumb hovered over the end call button, my instincts screaming at me to hang up, when a voice finally cut through the static. Low, raspy, and achingly familiar.
"Mara."
The glass of water in my hand suddenly felt like solid ice. The kitchen around me grew freezing cold, the three years of safety I had painstakingly built completely dissolving in a single heartbeat. I was dragged right back to being twenty-two, standing in a clinical hospital room with a shattered soul.
Before I could choke out a response, the deep voice spoke again, sending a shiver straight down my spine.
"I found more than the number."
The line went dead.
- Writer
