Chapter 28 Serena
Six weeks. Six weeks of my body keeping secrets while I'd been playing house with someone else's family.
The evidence had been there—throwing up behind the elementary school during Finn's hockey practice (blamed on food poisoning), crying at a commercial featuring a dad teaching his daughter to skate (blamed on PMS), my bra suddenly feeling like medieval torture device (blamed on stress eating).
"Jesus Christ," I whispered to the stick, like it might recant its testimony. "Jesus fucking Christ on a zamboni."
A baby. Brad's baby. A tiny human who might inherit asthma, or Brad's stubborn streak, or my tendency to panic-clean when overwhelmed. My brain started spinning worst-case scenarios: NICU visits, breathing monitors.
I could handle Finn—had been handling him for months. But Finn came with instruction manuals, established routines, seven years of Brad's expertise to rely on. A baby would be different. A baby would be mine to potentially fail.
"Serena?" Brad's knuckles rapped the door. "You okay?"
"Just doing my makeup!" My voice came out like I'd been huffing helium.
"For the game that's in twelve hours?"
"It's... a process!"
His footsteps retreated. I shoved the test in the trash, then immediately dug it out and wrapped it in toilet paper like I was hiding evidence of a murder, then buried it under Q-tips and dental floss in the wastebasket.
My hands shook as I splashed cold water on my face, practicing normal expressions in the mirror.
Hi, Brad. Ready for the biggest game of your career?
By the way, I'm growing your child. Please don't collapse.
Coming out of the bathroom, I found him at the kitchen table, bathed in phone glow, watching the same power play formation for the hundredth time while absent-mindedly forking eggs he wasn't tasting.
His knee looked like a science project—wrapped, braced, elevated on three pillows, ice pack secured with what appeared to be half a roll of plastic wrap.
This was not the morning for revelations.
"You need actual nutrition," I said, sliding into my chair with toast that might as well have been cardboard. "Not whatever that is."
"It's eggs."
"It's yellow sadness."
He didn't even smile, completely absorbed in watching himself fail to stop Bob’s wrap-around from three different camera angles. On the screen, past-Brad moved like his joints were held together with wishful thinking.
"Your knee looks worse," I observed, immediately regretting it.
"It's fine."
"Brad—"
"It just needs to last twelve more hours."
Twelve hours. I pressed my palm against my still-flat stomach, where cells were dividing with ambitious determination. Just wait twelve more hours, little secret. Let Daddy have his moment.
That's when the air changed.
Not the air itself—the way Finn breathed it.
The shift from normal to crisis happened between heartbeats.
One second he was drawing a racing car at the table, red crayon steady in his grip.
The next, his shoulders hunched forward, chest caving with the effort of pulling oxygen through airways that had decided to slam shut like subway doors.
The wheeze started low—that sinister whistle that meant his bronchioles were staging a rebellion.
"Nebulizer." Brad's command cut through my freeze response, but I was already at the medication station, hands hovering over the arsenal of inhalers, nebules, and spacers that had colonized our kitchen counter.
Albuterol. No—wait. Budesonide? We'd been alternating based on triggers.
Morning was usually Pulmicort unless he'd had nighttime symptoms, then we'd switched to Xopenex but only if his heart rate was under 100, and had we checked his peak flow this morning?
The medications blurred together, their names suddenly foreign.
My hand closed on the wrong vial—the purple cap, maintenance dose, the one that would do absolutely nothing for acute bronchospasm.
"SERENA!"
Brad's voice sliced through my panic. He shoved past me, his bad knee buckling slightly, grabbing the correct vial with the precision of muscle memory. 0.5mg of Albuterol mixed with 3ml saline, nebulizer mask over Finn's face before I'd even processed my near-catastrophic error.
"Easy, buddy. Dragon breaths, remember?"
Finn nodded against the mask, eyes locked on Brad's with absolute trust while his intercostal muscles pulled tight between his ribs, the hollows above his collarbones sucking deep with each labored breath. His pulse ox read 77%. The number blazed red on the monitor like an accusation.
I stood there, useless as furniture, watching Brad conduct the emergency symphony he'd performed hundreds of times. Check pulse ox. Count respirations. Watch for cyanosis. Adjust medication flow.
His hands never shook, even though his own body was disintegrating, even though the biggest game of his career loomed, even though I'd almost—
"Getting better," Finn whispered through the mist after eternal minutes. "Yellow zone now."
"That's my warrior." Brad kept one hand on Finn's back, feeling the respiratory rate, while speed-dialing Dr. Lisa with the other. "Hey, it's Brad. Finn's having an episode. Acute onset, no obvious trigger. Responded to Albuterol but slowly."
I backed away until the counter caught me, gripping the edge hard enough to leave marks. In my mind, Sarah stood where I was standing, would have grabbed the right medication instantly, wouldn't have frozen while her son suffocated.
Her son.
Not mine. Never mine. I was just the substitute who'd nearly administered a fatal dose to a child who trusted me.
"She had this sixth sense," Brad had told me once about Sarah. "Like she could feel Finn's attacks coming before they started."
And here I was, six weeks pregnant with a baby who might face the same respiratory challenges, proving I couldn't handle the one we already had.
Brad glanced at me then, finally registering my statue impression by the sink.
"Hey." His hand covered mine. "You okay?"
"I almost killed him."
"You grabbed the wrong vial. You didn't administer it."
"But I almost—"
"Almost is why we double-check. Always." His voice carried no judgment, just exhaustion. "Seven years of this, and I still verify every dose."
But he'd never frozen. Never stood there like a deer in headlights while his child suffocated. The pregnancy hormones were already scrambling my brain, and this was just the beginning. What would happen with a newborn and a seven-year-old both needing immediate care?
"I need air," I managed, pulling away.
"Serena—"
"Just check on Finn."
I escaped to the deck, the morning air sharp enough to cut. Inside, Brad murmured to Finn, their routine as choreographed as any play he'd ever run. They didn't need me. Worse, I was a liability.
That evening, Brad laid out his gear like a soldier preparing for war—tape, guards, pads arranged with surgical precision while I watched from the doorway, my secret growing heavier with each breath.
He moved through his ritual: protein shake at 4:15, visualization at 4:30, equipment check at 4:45.
The machinery of routine that would carry him through one last battle.
"I can't do this."
The words escaped like criminals, surprising us both. Brad's hands stilled on his elbow pads, his reflection in the bedroom mirror meeting my eyes.
"Can't do what? Watch the game? Finn's already—"
"This." My gesture encompassed everything—the nebulizer charging on Finn's nightstand, the medication schedule taped to the fridge, the family photos where Sarah smiled eternally. "I'm playing dress-up in someone else's life."
Brad turned slowly, favoring the knee that looked like abstract art under the skin. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"I almost gave him Pulmicort instead of Albuterol. After months of practice, charts, color-coding—I grabbed purple instead of blue. Purple, Brad. The maintenance dose during acute bronchospasm. That's not a mistake, that's negligence."
"You caught yourself—"
"Sarah wouldn't have needed to catch herself!" The name detonated between us. "Sarah knew by the sound of his cough which medication he needed. You told me that. Tuesday, you literally said 'Sarah could diagnose him from two rooms away.'"
His jaw clenched, that muscle that jumped when he was fighting not to explode. "Don't."
"Don't what? State facts? I'm not her. I'm the understudy who can't remember her lines when the curtain goes up."
"Stop it."
"Your son needs someone who doesn't freeze when he can't breathe. Someone whose hands don't shake when—"
"Someone who stays." His voice went deadly quiet, more terrifying than yelling. "He needs someone who fucking stays."
"That's exactly why I should go. Before I fail him worse. Before—" Before I bring another child into this for you to protect from my incompetence. "Before he loves me too much to recover when I inevitably fail him."
"You didn't fail anything! You're scared. I get that. But you don't run from scared."
"I'm not running—"
"Yes, you are." He grabbed his gear bag with sharp movements. "Just like Marcus said you would."
The name of my ex-fiancé in his mouth felt like betrayal. "You don't know anything about Marcus."
"I know he convinced you that you weren't enough. And now you're proving him right."
Tears burned my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. "Maybe he wasn't wrong."
The words hung between us like a challenged penalty, waiting for review. Brad's face went blank, professional athlete's poker face sliding into place.
"The bus leaves in fifteen." He moved to the door, paused. "If you're going, at least pretend for him tonight. Let him watch the game thinking you give a shit. You owe him that performance."
The door closed with devastating quietness. I heard him in Finn's room, promises about bringing home the Cup, reminders about using his inhaler during excitement. Then the garage door grinding open, his car engine fading into distance.