CHAPTER 15 Penny Calloway
Fever
“Mama?”
I think I might be dreaming.
“Mama!”
Nope, a kid is up.
“What is it?” I ask, sitting straight up as my heart pounds wildly in my chest.
The clock on my nightstand tells me it’s after two in the morning.
“Mama, I don’t feel good. I’m freezing cold,” a little voice whispers, and in the dark as my eyes adjust, I can’t tell if it’s Sammy or Benji.
“Come here, honey,” I say, and I reach out for the small figure next to my bed. It’s definitely Benji, and when my hand reaches to his forehead, he’s burning up.
Shit.
I didn’t pack any of the medicines, and I highly doubt Liam stocked ibuprofen for children.
I touch the lamp on my bedside table, and it glows dimly on the first level of brightness. My poor boy looks totally miserable. His cheeks are ruddy and his eyes are red.
“Okay, baby boy, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to wrap you in a blanket, and I’m going to see if Liam has any medicine.”
His teeth chatter together, and I grab the huge, fluffy blanket at the foot of my bed and wrap it around him. “Come sit in the chair over here,” I say, helping direct him over to the chair. “I’ll be right back.”
I run to the kitchen and open a few cabinets, but I can’t find what I’m looking for.
I hate to do it, but I climb upstairs, and I quietly open Liam’s door.
It’s pitch black in here, but the light from the hallway floods the room. I creep slowly across the room toward his bed and shake his shoulder. “Liam?”
“Hey, baby,” he murmurs. “You come to wake me up with a treat?”
I wish.
He reaches around my waist and hauls me down so I’m on top of him.
“Liam! Stop! Benji has a fever. Do you have a thermometer or any children’s medicine?”
His eyes open slowly, and he squints at the light coming in from the hallway. “Shit,” he mumbles, and he lets me go. “Yeah, there’s a thermometer in the first aid kit under my bathroom sink, but I doubt there are any meds in there for kids. Hang on.”
I sit up, and he climbs out of bed to go grab it. He returns with one of the old-school oral digital thermometers. My kids are used to the forehead scanner ones, but this will work.
“No meds. Sorry.”
I shake my head. “Thanks. I didn’t think I’d need something on my very first night here.”
“What can I do?” he asks.
“Nothing, but thank you.” I rush downstairs with the thermometer. “Hold this under your tongue until it beeps,” I tell Benji. He does, and I read the screen when it beeps: 104.1.
“Shit,” I mutter, and normally he’d scold me for cursing, but that’s a pretty high fever, and he’s kind of out of it.
I’m not quite sure what to do.
It’s two in the morning. It’s not like his doctor is open, or even urgent care. This feels serious enough to warrant an emergency room visit, but I don’t want to wake Sammy. I can’t exactly leave him here with a stranger, though, either.
Shit, shit, shit.
Why tonight of all nights?
I just wanted to get away from Brent. I really didn’t think this whole moving-out thing through.
I draw in a deep breath.
“How is he?” Liam asks from the doorway.
I walk over to him and admit the truth. “He has a really high fever, like dangerously high, and I have no clue how to handle fevers.”
“Do you want me to run out and get some medicine?”
I bite my lip. “Actually, I think I might want to take him to the emergency room. Let me just wake Sammy and have him get dressed.”
“I can watch him,” he offers. “He’ll probably sleep until morning, anyway, right? But I’ll be here if he needs anything. I’ll sleep out on the couch in the living room to make sure I hear him if he wakes up.”
“I can’t ask you to do that,” I say, my eyes filling with tears.
“I know. You didn’t. I’m offering. Or you can wake Sammy up and give him the option,” he suggests.
“Oh, good idea.” I rush to the room next door and climb halfway up the ladder to the bed. “Sammy,” I whisper-yell, shaking him to get him to wake, but it’s like trying to wake the dead. He’s not budging. Once that kid is out, he is out.
I scribble a note for him letting him know his brother is sick, I’m taking him to the doctor, and Liam is here if he needs anything, and then I head back to my bedroom.
“Okay, my boy, here’s what we’re going to do,” I say to Benji while I find some clothes to change into. “We’re going to go see the doctor and find out what’s wrong so we can get you feeling better, okay?”
“Okay, Mama,” he says.
I rush around the room while Benji lies in the chair somewhere between awake and asleep, and Liam sleeps in the living room just in case Sammy wakes.
Ten minutes later, I’m carrying my boy down the elevator and toward my car in Liam’s parking garage. The streets are quiet this time of night, and we make it to the hospital in just a few minutes.
I check in at the desk, and the room is fairly empty, thankfully. Only one other patient waits for care, and we’re called back first. Benji’s temperature is even higher now, and the tech offers several different test options.
Fifteen minutes later, we have a flu diagnosis and a prescription for Tamiflu. They gave him some ibuprofen to bring down the fever for now, and they sent us on our way.
We’re back just as the sun is starting to come up, and Sammy never even woke up.
I fill Liam in on the details, and then I head to my bedroom while he heads upstairs to his.
I let Benji sleep in my bed beside me so he doesn’t get his brother sick, and I’m far too keyed up to fall asleep, so I email my boss that I need to take a personal day for a sick child, play some games, and try to get some work done on my phone as I wait for morning to come so I can get Sammy up and out the door for school.
When that time comes, however, I climb the ladder to Sammy’s bed only to find that he’s already awake, and he’s shivering. I set my hand on his forehead and discover he, too, is burning up.
Shit.
That’s two down for the count.
I leave a message with the pediatrician asking if I even need to come in or if they can just prescribe Tamiflu for Sammy, too, and I let him stay in bed. I call both kids out of school for the day, and then I wait. If they both got it, surely I’m next, and maybe Liam, too.
What a way to introduce him to my kids.
It’ll be twenty-four hours from when we picked them up at the earliest before we start to feel symptoms, and I’m trying to believe we’ll be fine.
The pediatrician calls me back when they open, and we schedule a virtual visit, after which Sammy is also prescribed the same medicine.
They both stay in their bedroom most of the day, and Liam drags a recliner into the corner of the room for me so I can curl up and sit in there with them.
They’re both too wiped out to do much more than ask for tissues, blankets, and more meds as they quietly watch their favorite YouTubers on their iPads while I attempt to get some work done on my laptop.
Liam brings me lunch at noon. He asks if I or the boys need anything.
He’s attentive and sweet, and I see the concern in his eyes.
It’s a different concern than I see from Brent.
If the kids are sick, Brent’s worried he’s going to get sick, too, which will interfere with his work schedule.
To be fair, I worry about it, too, but my work can wait.
Liam, however, seems most concerned about making sure we have whatever we need.
He’s not worried he’s going to be sick, instead bringing the boys popsicles to get some liquids down them and offering the biggest assortment of Gatorade flavors he can find to keep them hydrated.
It’s a complete one-eighty from what I’m used to—and from what the kids are used to. It’s always been the three of us with Brent popping in when he wasn’t busy working or banging some other woman. Liam takes care of us. All three of us, me included.
He’s being a good friend. I realize this. He’s young, and he’s not their father. He’s not my boyfriend, either, no matter how much he feels like he is.
We’ve only actually spent one night and one weekend together. There’s no label between us except for the fact that he’s my best friend’s brother.
But it feels nice to be taken care of for a change.
I’m exhausted by the time I get the boys to sleep. I meet Liam in the kitchen for a bowl of late-night Cap’n Crunch, and he pushes the gallon of milk across the counter toward me to fill my bowl to my liking the way a bartender would push a glass of whiskey across the counter.
“Thanks,” I murmur.
“Can I get you something more than cereal? You were a rock star taking care of the boys today.”
I shake my head. “This is perfect. As good as a drink sounds, I need to be able to get out of bed if one of the boys calls me.”
He tilts his head as he studies me for a beat. “You’re a good mom.”
“You were such a big help to me today. Are you sure you’ve never taken care of kids before?”
He chuckles. “Just Ivy when she was younger, but she’s only five years younger than me.”
“Do you want kids someday?” I ask, and I’m not sure why the question comes out.
I freeze as I realize it might sound like I’m asking him to step in where Brent was, but honestly, it hasn’t even been a week since the first time we slept together.
It’s not what I mean at all. I scramble to backtrack.
“Of your own, I mean. I’m not asking you to—”
He holds up a hand and shakes his head. “No worries, I didn’t take it that way.
” He lifts a shoulder. “I guess I’m not one of those people who ever felt like I needed to have them for my life to be complete, you know?
My career is unstable. I’m moving across the country.
I guess if I ever wanted to, I never really thought seriously about it happening until much later. Maybe even after I retire.”
“What do you think your career would be if it weren't football?” I ask.
He twists his lips. “Probably the family business.”
“Are you interested in construction?”
He shrugs again. “Not really.”
“What are you passionate about?”
“Your cunt.”
I roll my eyes. “That’s definitely a twenty-six-year-old answer.”
He laughs. “Honestly, I don’t know. I love football.
I don’t know that I’m passionate about it, and sometimes I feel like I should be since I play it professionally, but I’m always in the backseat.
Always second best. The youngest of the Bradley brothers, the only one who plays pro ball and isn’t a starter.
Sometimes I wonder how I even got here. Other times I wonder if it’s because my dad paid for my position in the league somehow.
” He presses his lips together and adds, “I’m passionate about Cap’n Crunch.
I’m passionate about living somewhere with a view. Beyond that…I don’t know.”
“I think you’re passionate about taking care of your family,” I point out. “You were the one flying back and forth when your mother was sick. You were the one reaching out to everyone with news of your father’s indictment.”
“Someone had to. It just sort of fell on me.”
“You still did it, and you didn’t have to. You’re passionate about fitness,” I point out.
“As I eat sugary cereal for a nightly snack,” he retorts.
“You’re passionate about making sure everyone around you has everything they need. That they’re comfortable, and that’s a rare trait in a man, Liam. Honestly. You have no idea.”
His eyes meet mine, and they burn. “Thank you. I guess I’m passionate about someday owning my own business. I don’t want to work for someone else when I retire, but I’m not really sure what I’d do.”
I shiver.
His brows dip. “Are you okay?”
I shiver harder.
Shit.
I mentally chalked the first shiver up to the way he was looking at me.
But this second one…
I reach up and feel my own forehead with the back of my hand, and I wrinkle my nose. “Where’s that thermometer?”
“Let me sanitize it for you first,” he says, and he dumps rubbing alcohol along the tip before he turns it on and pushes it across the counter toward me.
When it beeps, I check the readout, and it’s 101.2.
I close my eyes and let out a sigh. “I’m next, I guess. Stay far, far away from us. Save yourself.”
He shakes his head and walks around the counter. He pulls me against his chest and holds me in a hug. “I’m already exposed, anyway.”
“I’m so sorry, Liam,” I say, my voice trembling. “I feel terrible that we moved in and spread germs all over your place when you have to be in San Diego in a few days.”
“I’ve got a week before I have to be there, and honestly, there’s nowhere I’d rather spend that week than right here with you and your boys.”
I tilt up to look at him, and I wish I could kiss him. I don’t know what I did to deserve this.
I remind myself he’s just being nice. We literally just finished a conversation where we discussed that one of his passions is helping other people. This isn’t anything more than that.
Even though after just a few days with him, I’m already starting to wish it could be.