Chapter 8
“And so what we’re talking about, Bonnie, is something we call a preemptive intervention.”
Dr. Reyes had a kind face and a nicer face for kids than for parents, and he was using the kid face.
He had Bonnie up on the exam table with her sneakers on the paper and her water bottle on her lap, and her ponytail was at the same angle it had been since breakfast. He was on the rolling stool, his clipboard balanced on one knee, leaning forward and talking at her eye level.
“Preemptive means before something happens. Intervention means we do something. Together, it means we do something before something has the chance to happen. We don’t want your heart getting tired sooner than we want it to. So instead of waiting and seeing, we do the procedure first.”
Bonnie nodded slow and considering, holding the information for later.
“How big is the procedure?” I asked, swallowing past the knot in my throat..
“Big enough that we need to plan for it. Not so big that we can’t.”
“Will I be asleep?” Bonnie asked.
“You’ll be very, very asleep.”
“Will my mom be there?”
“Right outside.”
“During?”
“During.”
She thought about that. “Will Pickles be there?”
The cardiologist didn’t break stride. “Pickles isn’t allowed in the hospital, but you can bring something of his.”
“I have a Pickles plush.” She smiled.
“That’ll do.”
She nodded again. Her thumb was running slow circles along the cap of her water bottle.
“Bonnie.” Dr. Reyes set the clipboard on his knee. “I have a question for you. The nurse at the desk has a brand-new sheet of stickers in her drawer that I think she’d like to show you. Want to go meet her for a few minutes while I talk to your mom?”
Bonnie didn’t buy this.
She looked at Dr. Reyes. Then looked at me. She’d known what the sticker maneuver was at six years old. He knew that she knew. He held her eyes anyway.
“Yes,” she said. “I would like that.”
She slid down off the table, picked up her water bottle, and went to the door. Dr. Reyes opened it. She walked out. The door clicked.
He didn’t pretend the moment hadn’t changed. He folded his hands on top of the clipboard and looked at me.
“The wall thickness has increased on this echo. Exercise tolerance is down. The ectopic beats — the irregular ones — are happening more often than they were even at her last visit, and her last visit was eight weeks ago, not eight months. The numbers aren’t catastrophic, but they aren’t where I’d like them to be either.
We’re inside a window that’s closing, Ms. Vela. ”
I had my hands on my knees, palms up. I hadn’t put them there on purpose. I’d set them down at some point and forgotten to move them.
“Spring is — when? April? May?”
“Fourth week of April was the last update I had.”
“And how long do you — ”
“Bonnie doesn’t have until April, Ms. Vela.”
I felt like something struck me. But I could only nod.
“The current schedule has her in the spring window because it was the next available foundation slot when she came up for reevaluation. I’m telling you, in the most direct language I have, that the spring window isn’t medically defensible for your daughter at this point.
We need to be having conversations about contingency planning, out-of-network options, other programs, other hospitals.
I don’t say this to alarm you. I say it because your daughter doesn’t have the time the foundation appears to be operating on. ”
I nodded again.
I thanked him.
Then picked up my coat from the back of the chair, told him I’d be in touch, and left the room.
Bonnie was at the nurse’s station with three sticker sheets fanned in front of her. The nurse was leaning on the desk, letting the negotiation run its course.
Bonnie spotted me and stood up. “I picked the dolphins.”
“Good choice, baby.”
She pocketed the sticker sheet and zipped her backpack. I took her hand, and we started for the elevator.
My brain was two floors up, in the foundation office on the seventh floor, where the receptionist didn’t know me yet but would know me by the end of business today.
I was rehearsing the sentence I was going to put at the front of the call: My daughter has weeks, not months, and you're about to learn how I deal with weeks.
I rounded the corner and walked into a chest in a navy sweater. The chest knocked the wind out of me. His shoulder hit my shoulder. We both stepped back at the same time, and it wasn't until our faces had come up that I understood what had happened.
It was Beau.
Beau Cross. In the corridor of the hospital where my daughter was. Of course.
He hadn't flinched at the collision. His eyes were on me. There hadn't been time to put a face on, and for some reason, he looked thinner.
“You are the man who slept on our couch.” Bonnie was at full volume. She’d been holding the question for a month.
Beau smiled. “I am, yes.”
“My mom was very mad about that.”
His eyes moved off her face and onto mine. “Really?” The corner of his mouth lifted. “She didn’t tell me that.”
He wasn’t alone.
The dark-haired man from the auction — the one who’d proposed by the windows — was two steps behind Beau with his hand at the lower back of the woman who’d said yes.
The woman had her head tilted half back, laughing at something the sandy-haired man behind them was just finishing telling her.
The older woman in cream — paler than at the auction, paler at the cheeks, walking slower because she was holding a paper cup of tea filled to the lid — caught up at the back of the group.
The whole group stopped because Beau had stopped.
The woman who’d said yes at the windows came around Beau and put out her hand to me. Her smile was warm, natural, and entirely unprepared for what she was walking into.
“Hi, I’m Suzanne. It’s nice to meet you.”
I shook her hand and gave her a smile. I wanted, with my whole working body, to take Bonnie’s hand and run. I wanted to be in the elevator. I wanted to be in the cab. I wanted to be three blocks from any of them with the door of my apartment closed behind me.
I also — and this was the betrayal — wanted Beau.
I’d wanted Beau through the previous evening and the night that followed it, and when I’d rounded the corner and seen him, the desire had jumped before the rest of me could catch up. And it was still there, even in the corridor with my daughter and his family present.
But I hadn't signed up to meet his entire family. I hadn't signed up to be looked at by his mother. The walls came back up — I wasn't subtle about it, I never had been — and I pulled Bonnie a half step closer to me.
"And I" — the sandy-haired man leaned down a little — "am Theo. I'm the fun one."
Bonnie eyed him. She had her water bottle in both hands. "You don't look very fun."
He grinned. "That's because you don't know me yet."
Bonnie didn't commit either way. She had her opinions about him pending.
The older woman in cream came around to my elbow with the paper cup of tea cradled in both hands. Her smile was the gentle kind. Her eyes were red at the corners.
"I'm Vivienne." She tipped her head to the side. "What brings you to the hospital, sweetheart?"
My mouth opened. I didn't have a sentence in it.
I had a list of evasions ready — annual physical checkup, routine workup, cousin's appendix, anything.
None of them were going to come out of my mouth in front of Vivienne, who was standing a foot from me, holding a paper cup of tea probably for her husband who was severely sick according to what little Beau told me.
I was about to give her an answer anyway.
Bonnie spoke first. "I have a heart thing."
My stomach went out from under me.
Bonnie didn't give private medical information to adults. She didn't give it to her teachers without three meetings and a permission slip. She gave it to the doctor and to Mrs. Park and to me. That was the list. The list now included Vivienne Cross.
The pity moved across them like a wave — Theo first, then Suzanne, then the dark-haired man — and then it landed on Beau.
Beau was looking at me. His face had changed. His eyes were on me, and they weren't asking one question. They were asking too many at once.
I hated the look. I hated being on the receiving end of it. Hated that he was finding out this way, and I hated more that I hadn't — at any point in the last four weeks — given him a way to find out a different way.
Vivienne moved before anyone else could. She crouched down in front of Bonnie — slow, careful with the cup — until she was at Bonnie's eye level.
"You," she said, "are very pretty."
Bonnie considered her for a second. "Thank you. I was just thinking the same about you."
Vivienne let out a sound that was not quite a laugh. "Well." She blinked at me. Then she blinked back at Bonnie. "I needed that today."
She balanced the cup on her thigh. "My husband is here too," she told Bonnie. "He's been here a few weeks. He's barely awake these days."
Bonnie watched her face. "Are you sad?"
Vivienne nodded.
"I'm sorry," Bonnie said.
Vivienne reached up and touched the side of Bonnie's face — the kind of touch a grandmother gives a granddaughter she's known her whole life.
Vivienne and I looked at each other over Bonnie's head.
"It's a hard place to run into someone, isn't it?" Her voice was low.
"It is." I gave her a nod.
She held my eyes for one beat. Then she straightened up slowly with the cup. "Beau has been here every day. So has his brother. So has Suzanne. Theo flew in from Monaco when he heard."
She didn't say anything else. She didn't need to. She'd told me where her son was every day, and she'd told me without asking me to do anything about it.
“Cade, dad's tea.” Beau reminded the dark-haired man.
Cade touched Vivienne's shoulder. "Mom, let's go give Henry his tea."
"Yes." Vivienne nodded once at me. "Excuse me."
She moved down the corridor. Cade and Suzanne went with her. Theo turned and gave Bonnie a wave that was about half a salute and half a wink, and Suzanne touched my arm on her way past.
Beau didn't move.
He waited until they were eight feet down the corridor before he stepped a half step closer. He kept his voice low.
"What did the doctor say?"
I shook my head once. "I can't do this here."
He didn't push. "Okay."
The man at the far end of the corridor stepped out of the stairwell.
He was in a charcoal suit two sizes too big at the shoulders. He had a black folder under his arm. His jaw was set hard, and his shoulders were forward, and he had taken the stairs.
I knew him.
I'd poured him whiskey. He'd paid me forty dollars for thirty dollars' worth of pour. He'd told me he was hoping to talk to the owner of the foundation that night.
He cleared his throat — across the corridor, deliberately, asking for permission to interrupt — and then he came toward us.
"Mr. Cross."
Beau turned.
"I'm sorry to interrupt." The man stopped two feet from Beau. He held the folder against his ribs, not yet offering it. "My name is Simon Kessler. I've been trying to reach you. Five minutes is all I'm asking. My son is Dylan. He's on the waitlist."
Beau looked at him for one beat.
He turned to me. His voice was level. "Excuse me."
I nodded.
He stepped away with Simon Kessler down the corridor. They stopped about fifteen feet off, near the window at the end of the hall. Simon was talking. Beau was listening — head bent toward the smaller man, nodding small, careful nods at whatever Simon was telling him.
Simon held out the folder.
Beau took it.
They shook hands.
Simon walked away.
Beau came back to where Bonnie and I were standing. He had the folder in one hand. He didn't immediately look at me.
"Who was that?" I said.
He looked up. Didn't soften it and gave it to me straight.
"His name is Simon Kessler. He is a father. His son Dylan is on the waitlist for the foundation's cardiac program. He's been calling for over a year." He took a breath. "I haven't taken the call, until just now."
Simon Kessler and I were in the same boat.
Mine was probably worse. We might be sinking already.
Bonnie tugged at my hand. "Mom, I'm hungry."
"Okay, baby."
I gave Beau a look that was half I'll talk to you later and half I can't promise that. Then shouldered Bonnie's backpack onto my own shoulder.
Beau followed us to the elevator. The doors took their time arriving. The wait was, for me, an exercise.
He didn't break the silence until the doors opened.
He held the door with one hand. The folder was still in the other.
"Sabrina."
I waited.
"I know what kind of day you're having. I'm asking anyway. Let me see you. Bring her" — he tipped his chin at Bonnie — "and we'll make a day of it in the park, museum, or aquarium. Whatever she wants. I won't put you in a position where you have to pick between her and me."
I had my mouth open to say no.
Bonnie said quietly, "They have an octopus at the aquarium."
I looked down at her. She was looking up at me with the eyes she used when she wanted something and was being gentle about wanting it.
"I'd really like to see the octopus, Mom."
I looked at Bonnie. I looked at Beau.
I had nowhere left to stand, and what I'd said about my walls being back up had been said over the head of a kid who was, as always, the wrecking ball at the bottom of any wall I built.
The elevator dinged.
I looked at Beau.
"Okay. We'll come," I quietly said.
Bonnie's hand let go of mine and went straight to the elevator button, and Beau held the door open until we were inside, and the last thing I saw before the door closed was him standing in the corridor with a folder in his hand and a face I wasn't going to be able to forget.