HIS FORSAKEN WIFE HIS GREATEST REGRET

Call My Mommy

The first thing I noticed was the ceiling.

It was white. Not a nice white — not like my bedroom ceiling. This white was flat and hard, and the light coming from it didn't have any warmth in it at all. It just pressed down.

I blinked.

My eyes felt thick. Like when you sleep too long and everything takes too much effort.

I blinked again.

There was a sound— a beep that came at even spaces and then sometimes didn't. I listened to it for a while before I understood it was coming from beside me. A machine. Wires going somewhere. I followed them with my eyes and found my own hand at the end of them, taped up.

My throat was very dry.

I tried to sit up.

The pain came so fast and so big that I made a sound. It came from deep in my hip, down through my leg, a dull, heavy thing that sat in my bones like stones.

I stopped moving.

I lay very still and breathed through my mouth and waited for it to go back to wherever it lived.

It didn't go all the way back. It just got quieter.

"Hey." A voice. Calm. Close. "Don't try to sit up."

I turned my head slowly.

Doctor Connor was beside me. He was looking at the screen of the machine when he said it but now he looked at me. His face was doing something careful — the kind of careful that grown-ups do when they're trying not to show you a feeling.

"Where's my mommy?"

He looked at the monitor. Adjusted something on the drip. Looked back at me.

"How's your pain? One to ten."

"Where's my mommy?"

"Ziva." His voice was gentle, but it moved past my question like it wasn't there. "The pain. Can you tell me?"

I looked at the ceiling.

"Six," I said. "Where's my mommy?"

He wrote something down. His pen moved too fast for how calm his face was.

"She's been notified that you're out of surgery," he said. "You did really well."

"I want her to come."

"I know."

"Can you call her?"

"We're — yes. We're working on that." He leaned forward and checked something near my wrist. His fingers were light, but I felt him notice something. His eyes moved to the machine and back. "Are you cold?"

I was cold. I hadn't noticed until he asked. The gown was thin, and the blanket they'd put over me wasn't Mommy's blanket — it was stiff and smelled like that sharp hospital smell and didn't feel like anything.

"Yes," I said.

He signalled to a nurse without turning around. She brought another blanket. Placed it over me without saying anything, which was fine, but her eyes went to the monitor when she stepped back, and she said something quiet to the other nurse that I couldn't hear.

I watched them.

Grown-ups thought that if they turned their backs, children wouldn't understand.

The door opened.

I heard the heels first.

I knew those heels.

Grandma Irene.

She was tall. She wore a white coat, and her hair was pulled back so tight it looked like it hurt.

I tried to push myself up. My arms shook. The pain in my hip fired immediately, hot and deep, and I must have made a sound because Connor's hand came to my shoulder before I got halfway.

"Don't get up."

"But grandma—"

"Don't get up." His voice was firm the way a door closing is firm. He left his hand on my shoulder for a moment, then removed it carefully.

I looked past Irene. At the open door. At the empty corridor behind her.

Daddy wasn't there.

I looked at the door for another second, just to be sure.

Empty.

"Hi, Grandma," I said.

Irene looked at me. Her eyes moved across me the way a person checks a delivery — making sure what arrived matched what was ordered.

"You need to be more agile," she said. "Nolan is almost recovered already, and he was the one who was sick."

"Nolan's doing well?" The pain got smaller for a second. "He's better now?"

"He's responding to treatment." She set her bag on the chair in the corner. She didn't come closer to the bed. "The family is pleased."

Connor straightened. "She just came out of a significant procedure. She needs rest, not—"

"I'm not speaking to you." Irene didn't look at him.

"No, but you're speaking to a child who—"

"Who did what was expected of her." Irene smoothed her sleeve. "Nolan has already shown more resilience in his first hours of recovery than this one has shown today."

I looked at my hand. At the tape over the needle. At the star sticker — still there, slightly peeling at one corner.

"But Nolan's okay," I said again. I needed to hear it once more. "He's going to be okay?"

Irene paused. Something moved across her face that I couldn't name. "He is responding well, yes."

"So I saved him." I looked up at her. "I saved him, right? That means — does that mean Daddy's happy with me now?"

The room was very quiet.

Irene looked at me for a long moment.

"Nolan's recovery is the result of excellent medical care and his own strength," she said. "He's a fighter. That's the Riggs blood."

I waited for her to say the other part. The part about me.

She picked up her bag.

"Rest," she said. "You're no use to anyone in this state."

She left.

The door swung shut behind her, and the room was quiet again except for the beeping and the low voices of nurses somewhere I couldn't see and the sound of Connor exhaling through his nose very slowly.

I looked at the ceiling.

Daddy's blood.

Nolan had Daddy's blood. That's what saved him.

Not me.

I had thought — I had really thought—

"Hey." Connor pulled his chair closer. Sat in it. Leaned forward with his elbows on his knees so his face was closer to my level. "You did a really brave thing today, Ziva."

"Did I help him?"

"Yes." No hesitation. "You saved his life."

"Then why didn't she say so?"

He didn't answer that.

I was glad he didn't make something up.

"Doctor Connor."

"Mm."

"Where's my iPad?"

He looked toward the shelf by the door. Then the counter. Then, the small cabinet beside the bed. His eyes moved with a thoroughness that told me he'd already checked and was checking again to be sure.

"It's not—" He stood. Checked the shelf properly, moving things. "It was brought in with you?"

"The nurse took it. She put it somewhere." I tried to remember. "She said she'd keep it safe. I need to show Mommy. I need to—" I stopped. My brain felt slow. Like moving through water. "I need to show her something."

"I'll find it." He said it like a promise. Like there was a difference, and he knew it. "I will personally find it and bring it to you. Okay?"

I nodded.

He sat back down.

My fingers were cold. I tried to curl them, and they moved, but slowly — not the way they usually moved. I looked at them for a moment, not quite understanding.

"Doctor Connor."

"Yeah."

"My fingers feel funny."

He was up before I finished the sentence. Both hands gentle around mine, checking, his eyes going to the monitor, his face doing that careful thing again. Except this time, the carefulness had more effort in it.

"Nurse." He didn't raise his voice, but something in it changed.

She appeared at his shoulder.

They spoke in the low register that children aren't meant to decode.

*Pressure's dropped again.*

*Since when.*

*Twenty minutes. Gradual.*

*Get Dr—*

*Already paged.*

I watched them talk. Their mouths moved. Their hands moved. Things got checked and adjusted and written down, and the whole time, I lay under my stiff hospital blanket with my funny fingers and my stone-heavy hip and the absence of my mommy.

"Doctor Connor."

"Right here."

"I'm sleepy."

"I know." He was at the monitor now. "Stay awake for me a little longer, okay? Can you do that?"

"I'm really sleepy."

"I know. Eyes open. Look at me."

I looked at him. His face was trying very hard.

"Did Daddy come?" My voice came out thin.

Connor's jaw moved. "Not yet."

"Is he coming?"

The monitor beeped. The sound changed — not much, just slightly. The way a song changes when one note goes wrong.

A second nurse arrived. Then, a third.

Connor's hand found my wrist.

"Ziva." His voice was calm, and I understood suddenly that the calmness was work. That underneath it, something else was happening that his voice was covering. "I need you to keep your eyes open. Keep looking at me. Can you tell me something — tell me what your favourite food is."

"Mommy's—" The word felt far away. "Mommy's mashed potato."

"Yeah? What does she put in it?"

"The — the—" I couldn't find the word. It was right there, and then it wasn't. "The red ones."

"The red ones. Okay." His thumb pressed gently to the inside of my wrist. Counting. "What else?"

The light above me pulsed. Or maybe I pulsed. It's hard to tell.

"Doctor Connor."

"Right here."

"I can't—" I blinked. The ceiling doubled. Came back together. "I can't remember."

"That's okay. I'm here."

"I saved him," I said. I needed to say it. To someone. To the room. "I saved Nolan. I did."

"You did," Connor said, and his voice did something it hadn't done all day.

It broke. Just slightly. Just once.

The beeping got louder. Or maybe I got quieter. The nurses were moving very fast now, that controlled speed that meant something had shifted.

My eyes were so heavy.

"Ziva." Connor's voice came from far away and close at the same time. "Eyes open. Stay with me."

I tried.

I really tried.