6. Conrad
CONRAD
I woke to the sound of my bedroom door creaking open. This wasn’t unusual, in theory. The house was large and old with expensive hinges on the doors. Not to mention the endless settling noises at night.
Still, at three a.m. on a Monday, every unfamiliar sound carried the implication of a home invasion.
For one horrifying second, my half-asleep brain concluded there was an intruder who would murder us. Or perhaps it was a ghost. An intruder ghost, here to scare us to death and steal our prized possessions. Either way, we were surely screwed.
God, my children’s imaginations were getting to me.
Lightning flashed outside the windows, throwing pale light across the room, revealing Bianca standing in the doorway, clutching the frame with both hands.
Her hair was uncharacteristically rumpled, and her pajama sleeves almost swallowed her hands.
Even from across the room, I could see the miserable shine in her eyes.
“Daddy, I don’t feel well.”
I was upright before she finished the sentence. “What hurts?”
“My stomach.”
She took two stumbling steps into the room before she gagged.
Oh shit.
I jumped out of bed and grabbed the wastebasket. I barely got to her in time as she retched.
“Well,” she whispered weakly, staring into the basket with disgust. “That’s unfortunate.”
“Okay,” I said, already moving into crisis-management mode. “Okay. You’re okay.”
Another crack of thunder rolled outside. Rain hammered suddenly against the windows hard enough to rattle the glass.
The storm had arrived with enthusiasm. At least it had given us the weekend outside in the sun.
I guided Bianca into the bathroom and held back her hair while she rinsed her mouth. The girl looked absolutely devastated by the entire experience.
“I hate vomiting,” she moaned.
“I don’t think anybody’s especially pro-vomiting.”
“I think some people are neutral.”
I went to get her toothbrush from her bathroom and brought it to her. “You’re delirious. Brush your teeth.”
By the time I settled her carefully against the pillows in my bed with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and a cool washcloth on her forehead, I was awake enough to realize this probably wasn’t ending with one sick kid.
Three years of solo parenting had taught me many things. One of them: if one child vomits at three in the morning, the others are probably loading the cannon.
I grabbed an empty mixing bowl from the kitchen and set it beside Bianca. “You’re getting the good bowl.”
She blinked tiredly. “The stainless steel one?”
“Yes.”
“I feel honored.”
“You should.”
She curled deeper into the blanket while I reached for my phone to text work that I probably wouldn’t be coming in.
Before I could unlock the screen, the doorway filled with another tiny figure.
Billie. Lightning flashed at the exact wrong moment, illuminating only her outline while thunder cracked overhead hard enough to shake the windows.
Her curls looked wild. She stood perfectly still in the doorway, staring at me with the solemn expression of a ghost child preparing to deliver bad news from beyond the grave.
I rubbed a hand over my face. “Not you, too.”
Billie blinked slowly.
“Billie,” I said carefully, “can I help you?”
Another flash of lightning lit the hallway.
“I throwed up.”
Right. Of course she had. “Where?”
“A mystery place.”
“Billie.”
“The upstairs bathroom,” Bianca said weakly. “I heard her.”
“Thank you, sweetheart.”
Billie shuffled into the room, looking utterly offended by the mere act of existing. “My bones feel tired.”
“That’s called being sick.”
She began to cry. “I don’t want to die, Daddy. You need to take me to the hospital.”
I crouched down to her level and moved the matted hair from her face. “You’re not dying, baby. You just have a stomach bug.”
She shook her head so violently that I thought for sure she’d throw up again, directly in my face, Exorcist-style.
“No, I saw it. I saw my organs fall into the toilet. I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe I’m going to die so young.”
I guided her to the bathroom. “Billie, I know it’s scary to vomit, but I promise, what you saw was simply the contents of your stomach. Not your internal organs.”
She wasn’t convinced, but she was too sick to argue. I got her cleaned up, then got fresh pajamas out of her closet, and settled her beside Bianca in my bed. She drank water from a small cup, which she held with both hands like her life depended on it, then she curled up under the blanket.
“This is the worst night of my life,” Billie whispered.
Bianca looked at her flatly. “You say that every time you have a mild inconvenience.”
“My stomach tried to kill me.”
I sat on the side of the bed, rubbing Billie’s back as I checked Bianca’s temperature.
No fever yet. Thank God. Maybe this would be one of those viruses that passed within twenty-four hours.
Outside, rain lashed against the windows in violent bursts. Wind bent the trees, making the shadows move wildly across the walls whenever lightning struck.
Somewhere downstairs, the house groaned.
Billie immediately pointed toward the hallway. “The storm is inside now.”
“The storm is not inside.”
She squinted. “How do you know?”
“Because I pay the mortgage, and I would notice weather entering the building.”
Just then, another miserable groan drifted down the hallway, but this time, it was human.
“Oh no,” Bianca murmured.
CJ staggered into the room, wearing sweatpants and an inside-out T-shirt. He was pale, sweaty, and hunched over, his arms curled around his stomach.
“I think,” he said hoarsely, “I’m dying.”
“Get in line,” Billie told him.
CJ made it approximately three more steps before he lunged toward the bathroom.
I hurried after him.
“Use the downstairs bathroom next time. This one has already been christened,” Bianca said.
The next hour devolved into complete chaos. Small, miserable bodies lay scattered across my bed like survivors of a maritime disaster. At some point, Billie threw up into a grocery bag, then apologized profusely to it afterward.
CJ spent ten straight minutes insisting he was handling his illness with dignity, then missed the bucket entirely as another bout of vomiting attacked him.
Bianca kept attempting to diagnose everyone using symptoms she’d read about online.
“No one has cholera,” I said for the third time.
“You can’t know that conclusively.”
“We absolutely can.”
“It’s the vomiting plus atmospheric conditions.” This was followed by a long digression into the possibility of paranormal activity and our bodies being possessed.
“You are not being haunted by a nineteenth-century disease.”
Billie looked alarmed. “Can ghosts throw up?”
“Please stop helping,” I begged.
By four-thirty, I’d given up entirely on sleep and dignity.
I had also given up on clothes, since mine now smelled of sweat and my children’s stomach acid. I dragged my hands through my hair and surveyed the scene.
The master suite had become a pediatric field hospital.
CJ lay sideways across the foot of the bed, groaning softly every few minutes for morale purposes. Bianca sat propped against the headboard, clutching her stainless-steel bowl with grim determination. Billie had dragged three extra blankets out of the closet and built a recovery nest.
Lightning flashed again outside, followed by bellowing thunder.
Billie turned her head to the windows. “The sky sounds angry.”
“The sky’s having a hard time,” CJ mumbled.
I sighed. “The sky’s not the only one.”
I sat heavily and pressed a hand over my face. This was terrible. Everybody was sick. The weather sounded apocalyptic. I hadn’t slept. There was vomit somewhere upstairs that I still hadn’t found.
And yet, underneath all the exhaustion and chaos and noise?—
I felt something painfully familiar.
The kids were all curled around me, half asleep. Miserable and dramatic, yes, but they were safe. I was providing that safety for them.
Bianca’s head tipped sideways onto my shoulder, and Billie had one tiny hand fisted into my shirt to make sure I stayed where she could reach me.
“Dad?” CJ murmured.
“Yeah?”
“If I don’t survive this… tell my story honestly.”
Billie lifted her head weakly from beneath the blankets. “Tell them he was brave.”
“I will.”
CJ nodded once, satisfied, then immediately grabbed the bucket again.
By six-thirty, the storm had fully settled over the house.
The rain kept up a relentless pounding against the windows, and the thunder never ceased, sometimes rolling so deep that that floor vibrated.
Every now and then, the wind dragged branches along the siding with long, scraping sounds that would’ve terrified me when I was a kid.
Lightning illuminated the room in intermittent bursts, so frequently that I was surprised we hadn’t lost power.
The kids looked more awful than the weather, if that was even possible.
CJ had entered the dramatic martyr stage of illness.
“This is how historical figures died,” he informed me weakly while staring at the ceiling.
“You have a stomach bug.”
“The decline of many legends began that way.”
I rubbed my eyes hard enough to see stars. Fatigue had settled into my bones. Every time I sat down, somebody needed water, reassurance, temperature checks, a fresh towel, or emotional support regarding vomiting etiquette.
I’d just convinced Bianca to sip electrolyte water when there was a knock at the front door.
All three kids looked up immediately.
Another knock.
“I’ll be right back,” I told them, standing carefully.
CJ lifted one hand weakly from beneath the blankets. “Don’t forget to tell them I was brave.”
Good grief, this child. “You threw up into a mixing bowl.”
The hallway was an apocalyptic scene with blankets and soiled clothing everywhere. Lightning flashed through the foyer windows as I reached the door and opened it.
Winnie stood on the porch beneath a black umbrella, dressed head-to-toe in dark layers with rainwater clinging to the edges of her coat.
I nearly fell to my knees and wept. Instead, I laughed. I was so glad to see her, I wanted to kiss her.
“Good morning,” she said gently.