Chapter 1 #2
Cal tiptoed outside the cabin and found the hole in the lattice around the porch that served as Georgie’s front door.
He held the carrot out and made a clicking sound with his tongue.
After a while of quiet waiting, he saw movement.
A twitching nose made an appearance, followed by several smaller faces.
Georgie took hold of the carrot with her teeth and dragged it back with her under the porch.
Her babies followed her excitedly, and Cal smiled.
“It’s tough to be a single parent, I know,” he said. “We could all use some help from time to time.” The irony of what he was saying did not escape him.
He went back inside, feeling his own stubbornness deeply enough that he had to start making dinner right away in order to get his mind off it.
It wasn’t just the cost, although that certainly played a role.
Years ago, Cal had a decent career in the military, which included health insurance.
He’d tried to keep working after his wife’s death, but that required him to trust someone else enough to look after Owen.
After his baby came home with a scratch or two, Cal couldn’t stand to leave him in anyone else’s hands.
As far as he was concerned, he’d left his wife in the hands of the doctors at the local hospital.
He’d trusted them to care for her while she gave birth to his son, and somehow, they’d failed.
Deep down, he knew it probably wasn’t their fault.
The hospital staff had probably done everything they could to save her.
But his heart told him differently. His heart screamed at him to never trust anyone with a loved one again, and after trying to buck that habit for the first year of his son’s life, he finally gave up.
It felt good to father his son regardless.
A boy needed his father around. That’s how Cal felt about it anyway.
After Owen woke that evening, Cal tried to feed him dinner. The boy had failed to hold down breakfast, and he hadn’t eaten lunch. “Have a little soup,” Cal said.
Owen just shook his head.
“You’re not even a little hungry?” Cal asked.
The boy was almost as pale as his whitish-blond hair.
He looked miserable, and Cal began to worry for real.
He pressed his hand to Owen’s head again and felt the heat and sweat he hadn’t wanted to feel.
“Let’s take your temperature one more time, just to see how you’re doing. ”
He pulled out the thermometer again and put it under Owen’s tongue. “I don’t feel good, Dad,” Owen said around the thermometer.
“I know, chief,” Cal said. “We’re working on it. Just hold that under your tongue like you did yesterday, OK? It’ll help.”
Owen dutifully held the thermometer under his tongue until Cal took it back, but the boy’s determined nature was gone.
He didn’t look like a challenge would do much to motivate him now.
Today, he held the thermometer because he was told to.
Cal’s heart broke a little to see it, and when he held the thermometer up to the light, he saw why his son was so listless.
Despite the medication he’d been given, Owen’s temperature had gone up.
No more waffling. Cal had made up his mind, and once Cal made up his mind, there was no more room for thoughts and worries. He was and always had been a man of action at his core. “We’re going on a trip today,” he said to Owen.
“Why?” Owen asked, his voice too quiet to be recognizable as his.
“Because it’s going to help you get better.” Cal packed a bag for his son, slung it over his shoulder, grabbed his own wallet and keys, and picked the boy up in his arms. “We need a little help,” he said.
Owen started to cry while Cal buckled him into the passenger seat of his pickup. “Don’t cry now,” he said as he pulled a comfort blanket over the boy. “Everything’s going to be OK.”
But Owen didn’t believe him. “You’re scared,” he said with a sniff.
“I’m not,” Cal insisted. Then he corrected himself.
“Maybe a little, but that’s because we’re going into town, and I don’t like going into town.
” He sat in the driver’s seat and started the truck.
“I’m not worried about you. I know you’re going to be fine.
” One lie to comfort the boy wouldn’t be so bad, he told himself.
“I just need some help to get you feeling better more quickly. So don’t worry, OK?
We’ll get ice cream afterwards. Just look forward to that. ”
They didn’t talk much for the rest of the drive into town.
Cal was focused on doing what needed to be done, on not panicking, on not thinking about that time he frantically drove Owen’s mother to the hospital.
These were memories he fought to keep buried so he could give her son a life that didn’t revolve around her loss.
She would have wanted it that way. She would also have insisted on taking her son to the doctor when his fever didn’t go down.
Cal told himself this as he parked his truck and carried Owen into the only urgent care clinic in Summit Falls.