33. Omar
Chapter thirty-three
Omar
Matty didn’t have to work until three o’clock, so we slept in, ate a late brunch, then he drove me home. It sucked saying goodbye, seeing as how we had just been reunited after an extended separation, but he had to work, and I needed rest.
Those not in the medical profession might not understand how clinical diagnoses work. As a nurse, pinning down what a patient’s malady might be wasn’t technically my role. That was a doctor’s job. Still, in the heat of battle with queues of stick patients, everyone did a little of everything.
However, in nursing school—as I supposed they taught in medical school for docs—self-diagnosis rarely worked out well for anyone, doctors being the worst patients and all. On that morning, I was one hundred percent certain of mine.
Jet lag was real, and I was suffering.
Why couldn’t everyone live in the same time zone? And while we were at it, why couldn’t everyone live ten minutes away rather than having London and Atlanta separated by an ocean and eight hours of flight time?
My mind was a blur as we shoveled cereal and gulped OJ.
It grew numb in the car.
By the time Matty tossed me to the curb outside my apartment and drove away, I was barely conscious. I stumbled my way up the stairs with my rolling bag banging each step behind me. When I finally got the key to turn and the door to open, Isis lifted her head from where she lounged on the back of the couch, gave a half-hearted yawl in greeting, then let her head fall back onto the cushion and closed her eyes.
“I missed you, too, you furry little ingrate.”
She didn’t even deign to open an eye at my jibe.
Feeling about as energetic as she looked, I abandoned my suitcase by the door, stumbled into my bedroom, and flopped, face-first, onto the mattress. Hours later, razor-sharp claws dug into my neck as Isis purred like an overheated engine in an assembly plant.
“Fuck, Isis,” I said, shooing her daggers away. “We’re getting you new claw condoms. Those things aren’t helping.”
She yawled and swatted at my face.
“Keep that up and you’ll lose those claws, you bloody bitch.”
She knew I didn’t mean those words, the insult or the threat. I would never declaw her or any other cat. While I wasn’t sure about the argument that declawing was cruel, it made total sense that she might need to defend herself if she ever slipped out into the big, bad world. I wouldn’t want my pretty princess defenseless on the streets. We might end up with a whole litter of sharp-clawed demons if that happened.
Annoyed by my lack of rising to serve her, she spun about, stuck her tail in the air, and showed me her asshole.
“Uh, thanks. I know some guys like pretty much any opening, but I am rather picky about whose butt I play with.”
She shook her furry bootie, yawled , then leaped off the bed. Once down, her yawling became the rat-tat of a machine gun, constant, rhythmic, and growing in volume until she was screaming up at me.
Her Majesty demanded her morning meal, and woe be it unto he who defied the Crown.
Cat fed, I opened the refrigerator to feed the human. Nothing looked edible. I checked the pantry. SpaghettiOs called to me. I didn’t even bother heating them up. The sight of me eating a children’s meal out of the can might give my mother cardiac arrest, but it was quick and easy. All I wanted was to stop my stomach from growling and crawl back into bed.
Ten hours later, the sun’s annoying fingers pried through my curtains. He was bright in his cloudless sky. I squinted and resisted the urge to give him the finger. Every Egyptian—even one who’d never lived in Egypt because he was raised in London—knew better than to anger Ra.
A god’s wrath was a real bitch to overcome.
I rolled over and checked my phone. It was seven in the morning. My shift didn’t start until two o’clock.
“I could do laundry,” I said to the ceiling fan that spun but didn’t respond. “Or go to breakfast.”
At a word that implied food, my thankless feline hopped onto the bed and began to make biscuits of my stomach.
“Or I could serve Her Majesty.”
Yawl!
I laughed and reached down to give her a behind-the-ear scratch.
The engine roared.
When I’d finally showered, fed Isis, eaten a small bite, and tossed my travel-dirty clothes into the washer, I dropped onto the couch and flipped through the television channels. News, morning talk shows whose hosts were so perky I wanted to throw something, more news, several game shows I didn’t recognize, reruns of M*A*S*H , which were funny, but I wasn’t in the mood for vintage comedy tinged with war.
Uninspired, I clicked off the TV and tossed the remote onto the coffee table.
Baby Josh popped into my head. I hadn’t thought about him the whole time I was in London. How could I let that little guy drift from my consciousness? He was so tiny—probably still was—and his odds, well, they weren’t great. We did our best to keep his mother’s spirits high, but outside their room, Jeanette told me the doc gave our little man a thirty percent chance of leaving the hospital. While that was better than the odds many in Level Three received, there was still a much greater chance he wouldn’t make it.
What if we’d lost him while I was away?
That made my heart seize.
“I need to get to the hospital,” I said to Isis. For once, she looked up and, I swear, nodded.
Too distracted to ponder my cat’s apparent understanding and human gesture, I grabbed my keys and headed to my car. My mind whirled with possibilities, most revolving around how I would handle the news of a baby’s death.
Maybe time with my family and the weight of my father’s situation tugged at my soul. Maybe I was just extra sensitive because of a lack of sleep and time-zone dysfunction. Who knew how the mind worked?
Whatever the cause, by the time I reached the hospital, I was on the verge of tears, certain I’d been away too long, that Josh’s fate had been sealed without me there to say goodbye.
I raced through the halls like a doc responding to a Code, barking for people to part and let me pass. Without my scrubs, I looked like any other family member visiting a hospitalized loved one, which made convincing the crowds to part more challenging; but a firm voice and unflinching pace did the trick.
When I finally slowed before the central nurse’s station of Level Three, Jeanette was standing there, clipboard in hand, making notes and glancing up at the big board.
“Well, hey there, world traveler,” she said, her smile as bright as ever.
“Josh?” fell out of my mouth. I could barely catch a breath from running so far. “Please tell me he’s okay.”
She cocked her head, then pointed down the hall with a nod. “Go see for yourself. Emily is in there with him.”
Her words didn’t have time to sink in before I was racing down the hall again. When I finally stood in the open doorway to my little guy’s room, I found Emily hovering over his plastic case, one hand inside, his hand holding her finger. Eyes, no longer cloudy, blinked up with all the love a baby could give his mother. Emily’s bruise was almost gone, though the bags beneath her eyes had deepened. Josh’s stay was taking its toll on the poor girl.
“Welcome back,” she whispered as she looked up. “I have someone here who’ll be glad to see you.”
She offered a weak smile and motioned me into the room. The moment my shadow passed over Josh, his head turned, and his lips curled. His tiny little body did a wiggly dance, and his hand—the one not holding his mother’s finger—reached up. Itty-bitty digits squeezed and stretched, a simple invitation for me to reach into his cube. The moment his hand gripped my finger, my heart filled with light, and a deep, rich laugh tumbled free.
“Shh,” Emily said. “They want him to have quiet time.”
I nodded and wiped a tear away.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
I nodded, not taking my eyes off her baby. “I am excellent now, thank you.”
A moment of silence passed before she freed her hand and strode to sit in the lounger. When she spoke again, her voice held an edge beyond her usual curiosity.
“Are you always this close to your patients?” she asked. “I mean, I can tell you care about Josh. Is that . . . normal? For a nurse, I mean?”
Another tear slipped free. I couldn’t contain everything that had built up over the last few weeks. Josh was the icing on my emotional mess of a cake. I pried Josh’s fingers loose and stepped over to sit on the doctor’s stool beside Emily.
She reached out and took my hand.
Patient contact was one thing; holding hands was entirely different. It felt intimate in a way I was unsure was appropriate. But, in my time visiting the pair, Emily had often looked as fragile as Josh, perhaps more so. There were so many layers in play there. I hardly knew where to begin or what to do.
“I . . . I don’t think so. No,” I answered. “I have babies come and go all the time in my section.”
Josh made a quiet noise that drew both of our gazes. I smiled at the squirming, cooing boy, so innocent and perfect, yet still incomplete.
“He likes you,” she said, her gaze bouncing from her son to me and back. “He’s friendly with the other nurses, but he’s different with you.”
I turned back and stared at her for a long moment. My mind spun with the hand-holding and her comment about Josh liking me differently than others, but my mouth, unbidden by my brain, went down a different path.
“Where is Josh’s father?”
Emily’s eyes snapped up. Her gaze hardened, and I thought she might pull back or kick me out of the room. But as quickly as her anger—or whatever it had been—passed, her features softened again, and she said, “He didn’t like that I got pregnant.”
I thought a moment, letting everything she hadn’t said sink in.
“He did that to your cheek, didn’t he?”
Her head lowered. “I didn’t mean to make him mad. I would never do that on purpose.”
I was stunned that her immediate response was remorse over angering her abuser.
She pulled her hand from mine and began fidgeting with her fingernails.
“His name is Joshua.”
My head cocked in confusion.
“Josh’s father. I named Josh after him.”
Oh, God. Seriously?
“I love him, Omar. At least, I think I did.” A tear swelled. “We met in high school. Well, I was in high school. He dropped out a couple years ago. He works construction now, kind of bouncing from one job to the next.”
I waited.
She remained silent, lost in thought.
When I couldn’t take the silence any longer, I ventured into deeper waters. “Emily, did he hit you often?”
She shook her head slowly, then looked up with tears staining her cheeks and changed to a nod.
“He hit you because you told him you were pregnant, didn’t he?”
She wiped her face only to have another wave replace the last.
“I was so excited. I thought he would be happy, too. We talked about being together forever, so what difference did it make if we had a baby now or five years from now? We were going to be a family.”
My heart ached for this girl. I reached out and offered my hand to her, palm up. She stared a moment, then took it.
“The doc thinks he caused all this,” she said, her voice a shadow.
“All of what?”
“He wasn’t supposed to come this early.” She looked to where Josh lay. “I mean, of course you know that. You’re a nurse and all. The doc thinks getting hit triggered something and he came out early, like really early.”
A Level Three preemie, by definition, hadn’t even made it through the second trimester inside the womb. Early didn’t describe his birth.
“The cops took Joshua, even after I said I didn’t want to press charges. He’ll never want to see me again.” Her shoulders began to heave as sobs overtook her. I left the stool to kneel before her, allowing the frail girl to fall into my arms and weep freely. “I can’t lose little Josh. He’s all I have left. He’s everything.”
My mouth opened—to say what, I would never be sure—when Josh’s monitor began to beep in alarm. I glanced up to find his oxygen level dropping . . . then his blood pressure. I stood and stared down into the bassinet. His eyes were unfocused, and his grip slipped free.
Another alarm sounded.
“Oh, God. What’s happening?” Emily’s voice filled with panic. “Omar, help him! Do something!”
I wasn’t his nurse. I wasn’t ready for Level Three. It wasn’t my place.
Before I could do anything, Jeanette and another nurse burst into the room.
“We need both of you to stand back. Let us work,” Jeanette said, shoving me out of the way. The other nurse did the same to Emily and took up a position opposite Jeanette. Their hands were a blur of activity, each movement deliberate, decisive, purposeful. A few heartbeats later, a doctor appeared. He exchanged glances with Jeanette, then looked back at us.
Jeanette, without a word of instructions, turned to me and gripped my arm. “I need you to take Emily to the waiting room.”
“Em—”
“Now, Omar. Just do it.”
As I turned, Emily fell into my arms and let me support her weight as we left her son’s room, serenaded by the urgent voices of doctors and nurses and the blaring of alarms I knew to be very bad signs.
I grabbed my phone with my off hand and texted:
Me : Oh, God. It’s Josh.
We made it only a few more strides before my phone chimed.
Matty : On my way.