Chapter 11 #3
She carried him to the Uber waiting outside. It was two a.m. on a Sunday night and there was very little traffic. The hospital wasn’t far.
It was at times like this that she really missed Ian. They’d had a few ER runs since he had left. Nights like that were always better shared. It was so much more reassuring to have someone with you. But she didn’t want to wake Ian if it was nothing.
The young pediatrician was waiting for her, and together they laid Tyler down on an exam room table. He pressed lightly on Tyler’s abdomen and he screamed, and the right side was distinctly worse. The doctor looked at Isabelle with a serious expression.
“You were right to call me. We’ve got a hot appendix. I’m going to order a sonogram to be sure, but I’ll call the pediatric surgeon now, so they can prep the OR. I think we got it in time. Has he been uncomfortable for a few days?” he asked, and she shook her head.
“No, he was fine today, he ran around in the country. He woke up out of a sound sleep screaming.”
As she talked to the doctor, he was already moving Tyler on the rolling table to the sonogram lab, where they confirmed his diagnosis. He called the surgeon to let him know, and they took Tyler back to the ER.
“He’ll be fine,” he said, and explained the situation to Tyler in terms he could understand, and Tyler screamed even louder and clutched his mother’s hand.
“I don’t want him to cut me open.”
“We’re going to take it out through a little hole, and you’re going to feel so much better, Tyler, when we get rid of that silly old appendix that’s making you hurt.”
The surgeon arrived twenty minutes later, and explained the procedure to Isabelle.
“We’ll have him back to you in an hour, good as new,” he said.
They gave Tyler a shot to relax him, and everything happened quickly after that.
They let Isabelle go to the doors of the OR and then they whisked Tyler away.
He had already stopped crying and was getting drowsy, and she stood there alone for a few minutes.
There was no lonelier place on earth than a hospital with a sick child when you had no partner.
She went to the waiting area, to wait for Tyler, and she called Ian. He sounded groggy when he answered. It was three a.m. by then.
“I’m sorry to wake you,” she said. “Tyler has appendicitis, and they’re taking it out now. They just took him to the OR. He was in a lot of pain,” she reported.
“Did it burst?”
“Not yet, but they were worried it might.”
“Poor guy. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Thanks for calling me,” he said, sounding friendly and warm. She was trying to see him as little as possible. It just upset her, knowing he was still with Leila, and their life had been in turmoil for months because of him.
Isabelle was sitting quietly in the waiting room, thinking about her son, and waiting for news of him.
It wasn’t a complicated procedure but it was still surgery.
She was staring straight ahead when she saw Ian walking toward her.
It startled her for a minute to see him.
He was so handsome, tall and sexy in jeans, a black sweater and an old distressed leather bomber jacket, and black loafers without socks.
His hair was slightly tousled, as though he hadn’t thoroughly brushed it before he left the house in a hurry.
She looked up at him with a smile, and as she gazed up at him, a woman stepped out from behind him, her hair, fresh from bed, uncombed in a loose casual knot, wearing tight jeans and a bustier top under a weathered man’s oversized black leather motorcycle jacket, with high-heeled black boots.
She looked incredibly sexy, somewhat cheap, and could only be Leila since she was glued to Ian, and had been hidden from view standing behind him.
When she stepped aside, Isabelle got the full view.
The two women had never met before and Isabelle felt like someone had just hit her in the solar plexus and knocked the wind out of her.
Leila was an impressive sight at three-thirty in the morning, in high heels and a bustier, and she looked far younger than her twenty-three years in a kind of Lolita way.
Isabelle found herself staring at how big Leila’s breasts were.
She could readily see what Ian saw in her, she looked like the star of a porn movie, and Isabelle was annoyed at Ian and couldn’t believe he’d brought her.
She didn’t belong there. This was about their son.
But Leila seemed to feel totally at ease being there.
She plopped down in the chair next to Isabelle, who was trying to ignore her so she didn’t say the wrong thing, or snap at Ian.
“Hi, I’m Leila,” she said, as friendly as a large Labrador or golden retriever with tail wagging.
Bringing his girlfriend, who had coincidentally broken up their marriage, to the hospital to meet his wife, during their son’s emergency surgery, was ample proof of Ian’s poor judgment in the circumstances.
He seemed totally unaware of how awkward the moment was for Isabelle.
“Leila wanted to come,” he explained, and sat down on Isabelle’s other side so she was sandwiched in between them, and she nodded at Leila. “She really loves the kids,” Ian added.
“Hi,” was the best Isabelle could muster, while they sat there silently, waiting for news of Tyler.
Isabelle was sorry she’d called him, but she had to.
It never occurred to her that Ian would bring Leila, for their first meeting.
Leila took a candy bar out of her purse and offered Isabelle some, which she declined.
Finally, what felt like hours later, the surgeon appeared in scrubs to report that Tyler had done well, and that the appendix had been about to burst so it was a good thing they’d come.
He was doing fine, and was in the recovery room and would be for another hour, and then they’d take him to a room.
“He’s going to be pretty sleepy for a few hours.
If you and your daughter want to go home and get some sleep, you can come back in the morning.
” Isabelle, too stunned to speak, nodded and thanked him.
The fact that the surgeon had mistaken Leila for her daughter made Isabelle want to hit someone, preferably Ian.
Isabelle wanted to stay in case Tyler woke up, but the surgeon made it sound unlikely, and she wanted to get a few more hours of sleep so she could be alert for him in the morning.
Leila stood up then and was ready to go.
She wanted to go outside and smoke, and Ian told her he’d be out in a minute.
He waited until she had gone before speaking to Isabelle.
“I’m sorry, I wouldn’t have brought her, but she really wanted to come. She loves our kids,” he said again.
“That’s because she is one. How could you bring her here?
Our son is in surgery and you bring your hot girlfriend to the hospital to meet me?
Where is your brain?” She knew where it was but didn’t want to mention it in public.
“That was possibly one of the most socially awkward moments in my life. Next time one of our kids needs surgery, please come alone. I take it you’re still living with her,” she said through pursed lips, well aware that she looked a mess.
She had thrown on her clothes and hadn’t bothered to comb her hair at all.
She felt like Leila’s great-grandmother.
“We’re kind of going between her place and mine,” he explained, a detail that Isabelle didn’t really want to know.
But he clearly wasn’t over her, and Isabelle could see why, and the fact that she “loved their kids” was evidence that Leila was obviously spending time with their children during visitation, but was too discreet to say so.
Isabelle wasn’t in love with that idea either.
Her conclusion was that Ian was an idiot.
She left them outside the emergency entrance to the hospital and hailed a cab to go home.
They got into another one right behind her, and Isabelle sat in the cab thinking about Leila.
She couldn’t believe that Ian had brought her to the hospital, with Isabelle there, and seemed to think it was normal to do so.
He was oblivious to Isabelle’s feelings.
The whole night seemed surreal when she woke up the next morning. She called the hospital to check on Tyler, and the nurse said he was still sleeping but had had a good night, and she called Olivia just to have someone to talk to and told her about her first meeting with Leila, and Olivia laughed.
“You’ve got to hand it to Ian. For a bright guy, he puts his foot in it every time. It sounds like quite a scene. There’s nothing like a narcissist to be oblivious to everyone’s feelings but his own.”
“And they’re more or less living together,” Isabelle added.
“I’m sorry. You have to admit it’s funny though. It sounds like a scene in a movie,” Olivia said.
Isabelle smiled at the memory. It was funny in retrospect, a little less so while it was happening. Leila was so unbearably sexy and looked so damn young. It wasn’t surprising that Ian was flattered by her attention and didn’t want to give her up.
“I’ll call you later to check on Tyler.” Olivia didn’t tell her that she’d exchanged emails with Francois. It was still too close to the bone for her, and he was a married man now with a beautiful wife. She still didn’t know if she’d see him. It might be too hard.
Isabelle took a shower and dressed to go back to the hospital. At least this time Leila wouldn’t be there, she hoped. But nothing surprised her anymore.