17. Sabrina #2
Pickles came off her fast. He landed on the rug and stood there with his fur up. He made a sound I hadn't heard him make before — high and thin.
"Mama, it hurts. It really hurts."
I had my phone out, and I dialed.
Beau was on the floor with me. He had been beside me on the couch, and he was on the floor with me now, his arm under Bonnie's shoulders, lifting her — gentle, like she might break — off the couch.
He laid her flat on the rug and put a pillow under her head.
He moved Walter out of the way and put Walter, deliberately, in the curve of her arm.
The dispatcher answered.
I gave her the address and the apartment number. I gave her my daughter's name, her diagnosis, and the cardiologist's name.
Bonnie's eyes rolled back.
Her body jerked once — short, sharp — and then jerked again, and then it became a rhythm, her arms and her legs going against the rug in a pattern. Her head went sideways. Her teeth came together. The jerking went on.
I screamed.
I didn’t know I'd screamed until Beau had a hand on my elbow.
He was beside me. His other hand was on Bonnie's shoulder, holding her steady against the rug — not stopping the seizing, you don't stop the seizing, you let the body do the seizing, and you keep the head from hitting the floor — and Beau was doing the keeping the head from hitting the floor.
He had her on her side, in the position she should have been in, and his hand was on the back of her head.
He looked at me.
"Sabrina, look at me. She is going to be okay. Look at me."
I looked at him.
But I couldn't breathe, I was screaming, and Beau was holding my daughter on the rug. His eyes were on mine, trying to calm me down.
“She is going to be okay.”
The seizing stopped.
It had been ten seconds. Ten seconds that had been six lifetimes long.
There was a knock at the door.
Mrs. Park was already coming in. She had her cardigan on and her keys in her hand. She heard the scream. She crouched at Bonnie’s other side. She didn’t panic. She put her hand on Bonnie’s forehead.
“Hey, baby girl. Hi. Hi, baby. We are going to take care of you.”
Beau looked at me. “Sabrina. Sabrina, breathe.”
I tried to breathe, but I was shaking like Bonnie had been against the rug five seconds earlier.
He pulled me into him.
He held me with one arm and kept the other hand on Bonnie’s back, his mouth against my hair.
“Sabrina. Breathe. In.”
I tried.
“In with me. In.”
I got a quarter breath.
“Out. Slow.”
My breathing came back.
The paramedics came up the stairs. They had Bonnie on the stretcher in two minutes.
Beau was already up and grabbed his coat.
He had Bonnie before they did — lifted from the rug, held against his chest with one arm under her shoulders and the other beneath her knees — and he was carrying her to the door because the paramedics hadn’t yet brought the stretcher up, and he was not, by the look on his face, going to wait.
He passed her to the paramedics in the hallway.
Then he came back for me. He grabbed the medication bag from the counter without needing direction. He put his hand at the small of my back and walked me out the door.
Mrs. Park stayed behind for a beat — to lock up, to grab my coat, to put Pickles in his carrier so he wouldn’t be alone — and by the time we were coming down, she was already moving behind us.
“Sabrina, I’m right behind you.”
“Yes, thank you,” I said, but the words came out clipped and thin, my hands trembling at my sides.
“Beau, hold her.”
Beau held me.
The ambulance was at the curb. Bonnie was on the stretcher with a paramedic over her, doing things I couldn’t look at. Beau got me into the back of the ambulance with her. Then he climbed in behind me.
I hadn’t asked him to. The paramedic hadn’t stopped him. He climbed into the back of the ambulance because he was coming with us, and that wasn’t something he was going to negotiate.
I held his hand the entire way to the hospital.
Dr. Reyes met us at the doors.
He met us there because Mrs. Park had called him from the lobby, and Dr. Reyes had run. He doesn’t run, but he did.
The team took her, while Beau and I stood in the corridor.
My hands hung at my sides, the ground feeling unsteady beneath my feet, and Beau was beside me with his hand at the back of my neck. Somewhere very far away, I heard him telling me she was going to be okay.
I didn’t believe him.
He walked me to the family lounge.
We waited.
Mrs. Park arrived. She had taken a cab and carried a larger quilted bag that, I would learn later, contained a change of clothes for me, a phone charger, two bottles of water, and a packet of crackers.
We waited through the kind of long stretch of time the lounge was designed to absorb.
Beau held my hand.
He had been holding it for the better part of an hour, and during all that time, he hadn’t said much of anything. He stayed beside me. He stayed still. He was the quietest I had seen him in the eight weeks I’d known him.
Dr. Reyes came in.
He had on his white coat. His glasses were pushed up into his hair. A chart was pressed against his chest. I knew, the second I saw it, that the chart wasn’t going to contain the news I wanted.
He sat down across from me.
“Sabrina, she is stable and sedated. She is in the cardiac unit on the fourth floor.”
“Is she gonna be okay?”
He breathed in. “Sabrina, this is the cardiac event I’ve been afraid of.”
I closed my eyes.
“The seizure wasn't just a seizure — it was her heart's electrical system breaking down. That specific rhythm, the one the paramedics caught on the monitor in the ambulance, was the one I've been warning the foundation about for months. Her heartbeat is already cutting off its own blood supply. The committee can’t sit on her letters and slow the process.”
My heart was breaking into pieces I couldn’t imagine.
“I’ll write to the foundation tonight and start calling tomorrow morning. I’ll call every morning after that until they schedule her. I’ll even call the chairman at home if I have to.”
“I can’t thank you enough, Dr. Reyes.”
I hadn’t, until that moment, fully articulated that the chairman of the foundation was the man sitting on the floor beside me, holding my hand.
I was articulating it now.
I didn’t say it aloud.
Saying it would become its own thing, and saying it here, in this lounge, wasn’t going to fix anything. I didn’t have room in my head for whatever would come after.
“How long will it take?”
Dr. Reyes looked at me.
“Sabrina, I don’t have a number.”
“Tell me anyway.”
He didn’t look away. “I’m concerned. I’m — Sabrina, I’m very concerned. Tonight is what I’ve been preparing you for. We may be looking at weeks. I don’t know if it is weeks. I’m hoping it’s more than weeks. But I’m no longer in a position to tell you it’s months.”
I started to cry.
It came without permission. Fast. Bigger than the lounge had asked me to be.
Beau pulled me into him.
He held me.
One hand pressed against the back of my head. The other arm wrapped around my back. His face was buried in my hair. He held me tightly, hard enough that it should have been enough.
It wasn’t enough.
It was never going to be enough.