Chapter 29. Soren
The last time she called me at this hour, it was to tell me her husband hadn’t made it.
“Soren.” Her voice is tight. “We’re at the ER. Rue has a fever. High. And the cough won’t stop. She couldn’t catch her breath between fits, so I brought her in.”
“I’m coming. How high?”
“One-oh-three. They’ve already seen her. They’re doing something for her breathing now.” Her voice catches. “I’m scared.”
“I know. I’m coming.”
The call ends. I sit on the edge of the bed in the dark.
Kit is still asleep beside me. He doesn’t wake easily after taking his evening medication. His back is turned toward me, one arm curled beneath the pillow, the blanket pulled to his waist. His breathing is deep and steady.
I need to wake him.
Leaving without explanation would be cruel, especially after everything he told me about Charles. I put my hand on his shoulder. He stirs. His body shifts underneath my palm, and after a few seconds he turns his head halfway toward me without opening his eyes.
“Kit. Baby.”
My voice is low.
“I have to go. It’s Rue. She’s sick, and Maren’s at the hospital with her.”
He makes a sleepy sound. Nods. His hand finds the edge of the blanket and pulls it higher around his shoulder.
“I’ll be back.”
Another nod.
His breathing is already settling toward sleep again.
I should wake him more fully. The thought occurs to me.
I should make him open his eyes. Make him repeat back what I said.
Make sure the information actually reaches him instead of disappearing into whatever fog his medication and sleep have wrapped around him.
But Rue is in the emergency room.
Maren is scared.
And the same old panic that lives somewhere beneath my ribs every time my sister calls me in the middle of the night is already moving me toward the door.
So I stand.
I cross to the closet in the dark and pull on jeans without turning on the light. Boots next. I sit on the edge of the mattress to lace them, and Kit shifts when the bed dips under my weight, his body adjusting without waking.
My jacket is on the chair near the door.
Keys in the pocket. Wallet. I crouch beside the bed one last time.
Kit’s face has turned toward me now, dark hair fallen over his forehead.
He looks beautiful. I lean in and press my lips to his temple.
His skin is warm. His hair smells like the cedar-scented shampoo he complains about and continues buying anyway.
“I’ll be back,” I murmur again.
He makes that quiet sleepy sound.
I stand and leave.
***
I don’t hear from Kit while I drive to the hospital, and I don’t expect to. It’s the middle of the night. He was barely conscious when I left. There’s no reason he would wake enough to notice I’m gone. I tell myself that at every red light. Mostly, I believe it.
Rue is curled against Maren when I get to the pediatric emergency department, exhausted and flushed, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders.
She looks tiny in the hospital bed. Too tiny.
Her breathing is still rough, but not the frightening, fighting-for-air sound I heard through Maren’s phone.
A nurse has already been in and out twice by the time I arrive, and the doctor comes back not long after.
I stay.
That’s the only thing I know how to do when Maren looks at me like that.
I sit beside her while Rue is treated and monitored. I get water when Maren forgets she hasn’t had any. I answer questions when she’s too tired to remember what time Rue last ate. I let Rue hold two of my fingers when she wakes up frightened and doesn’t want another stranger touching her.
Slowly, the situation stops feeling like an emergency.
Her breathing eases. The fever begins to come down.
The tension in Maren’s shoulders releases by degrees instead of all at once.
By a little after five, the doctor is comfortable sending them home with instructions, medication, and strict directions about what would mean coming back.
I drive them home.
On the way, we stop at a twenty-four-hour pharmacy to fill the prescription. While Maren handles the paperwork at the counter, I wander into the small toy aisle near the back.
There are stuffed animals on one shelf. Cheap ones. Too bright. A pink unicorn with one eye slightly higher than the other. A bear wearing a heart-shaped shirt. A round dusty-blue bunny with long ears. I pick up the bunny. Some part of me thinks immediately of Kit. I buy it.
By the time I make sure Maren and Rue are settled, make Rue promise me she’ll rest instead of building submarines, and finally leave, dawn is starting to gray the sky.
It’s after six when I unlock my own front door.
Nearly four hours since I left.
Nearly four hours during which I did not check my phone even once because all of my attention was on Rue and Maren, and because I assumed—wrongly, stupidly—that Kit would sleep through the whole thing the way he usually does.
He hasn’t.
The moment I step inside, I see him.
Kit is on the couch.
Awake.
His knees are pulled to his chest, the blanket from our bed wrapped around his shoulders. His eyes are red. Duffy is clutched against his chest with both hands.
He is staring at the blank television.
I set the pharmacy bag and the small paper bag from the toy aisle on the kitchen counter.
Kit looks at me. His jaw is set. He does not look happy. I can’t blame him.
“Hey,” I say quietly, already crossing the room. “I’m sorry it took so long.”
He doesn’t answer immediately. And in the silence before he does, I get my first real look at him. Not merely tired. Not merely awake too early. Wrecked.
I know instantly what those hours must have been like for him: waking to an empty side of the bed with my half-asleep explanation too blurred in his memory to hold onto.
“You left,” he says.
The words are small.
“I did.”
“I don’t—”
He stops. Swallows hard. “I woke up and you were gone, and I couldn’t remember if you actually told me or if I dreamed it. I lay there for like twenty minutes staring at the ceiling trying to figure out if that conversation actually happened.”
His voice catches.
“It didn’t feel real. It felt like…”
He presses his mouth shut.
“Like what, baby?”
His arms tighten around Duffy.
“Like with Charles.”
He says it quickly, as though speed will make it hurt less.
“He used to just be gone sometimes. No warning. I’d wake up and the other side of the bed would be cold, and I never knew if that meant an hour or a week. I used to lie there doing math on how long it had been, like counting was going to fix anything.”
His eyes drop.
“And I know this wasn’t the same. I know you had an actual reason. Rue was actually sick. You weren’t just fucking off somewhere because you were mad at me.”
His breath catches.
“I know that. I do. But knowing it doesn’t make my chest stop doing the thing.”
“It isn’t insane,” I say. His eyes lift. “You went through something real. Your body doesn’t know the difference between then and now just because your head does.”
His eyes are wet now.
“That isn’t a flaw in you. That’s what fear does. It doesn’t check the calendar first.”
A tear slips free.
Then another.
“I texted you like four times,” he says. “I know you were dealing with Rue, and I’m not mad about that specifically. I just sat here doing the thing where I tried to figure out how long was too long before I was allowed to actually worry.”
His mouth trembles.
“And I never landed on a number. So I just kept not-worrying until I couldn’t anymore.”
I sit beside him. I don’t defend myself. I open one arm. Kit comes into it immediately. No sound. No hesitation.
His body folds against my side, face burying itself against my chest. My jacket is still cold from the morning air, and then his arms are around my ribs, gripping hard enough that I understand what he’s doing.
My hand finds the back of his head, fingers settling into his hair. His breathing is ragged at first. Then slower. His heartbeat against me is fast, then gradually less so.
“I’m here.”
I say it into his hair.
“I’m sorry.”
He grips me tighter.
“I should have woken you properly. I should’ve made sure you opened your eyes and actually understood what I was saying instead of mumbling it at you while you were half asleep.”
His shoulders shake once.
“That part is on me.”
“You don’t have to apologize for Rue being sick.”
“I’m not apologizing for Rue being sick.”
I ease back just enough to look down at him.
“I had to leave.”
Kit nods.
“But I’m apologizing for the four hours of silence afterward while you sat here doing math on how long was too long.”
His face crumples slightly.
“That was mine to manage better.”
“You were busy.”
“I was.”
“With a sick kid.”
“Yes.”
“You probably forgot your phone existed.”
“I did.”
Kit looks at me. I hold his gaze. “Those things explain it. They don’t mean it didn’t hurt you.”
His face disappears into my chest again.
I wrap both arms around him. For a while, that is all we do.
His body slowly believing what his mind already knows.
When his breathing has mostly settled, I reach toward the paper bag on the counter without letting him go.
My fingers catch the crinkled edge, and I pull it toward us.
Kit doesn’t lift his head. I open it one-handed.
Take out the dusty-blue bunny. Then set it gently into his lap.
He finally looks down. His fingers loosen around Duffy.
One hand reaches for the bunny. He turns it over slowly, thumb finding the little felt nose and pressing against it.
The line of his mouth doesn’t change. But his shoulders do. A little less rigid.
“I saw him while Rue’s prescription was being filled,” I say.
Kit strokes one ear.
“I thought you might like him.”
His throat moves.
“You thought about me?”
The question hurts more than it should.
“Of course I thought about you.”
He stares at the bunny.
“I should’ve thought to check my phone too.” Kit doesn’t answer. I touch his hair. “I’m sorry I didn’t.” He pulls the bunny against Duffy and holds both. “I’m sorry I had to go,” I say. “I’m not sorry I went. Rue needed me.”
“I know.”
“But I am sorry I left badly.”
That gets his eyes back on me. He looks at me for a long moment. Then nods. I don’t push for anything else. I know I hurt him, even though there was nothing I could have changed about the leaving itself. Only the leaving well.
Making sure he actually understood.
Checking in once the emergency settled.
Remembering that a promise to come back means more when the person waiting knows what is happening.
I can do better next time.
I will.
Kit is still holding both stuffed animals when I look at him again. His eyes are swollen. Hair a mess. Blanket wrapped around him like armor.
“Want to build a fort?”
He blinks. Looks up. Something in his expression shifts, softening a little. And I’m already moving before he answers. I grab the nearest cushion, the thick one from the armchair, and haul it to the middle of the living room floor.
Kit watches me, then his feet hit the floor.
He picks up the throw blanket where it has fallen and carries it to the growing pile without being asked.
Every cushion in the apartment eventually migrates into the living room.
The couch cushions come off one by one. I pull two dining chairs over and drape sheets between them, anchoring the corners with binder clips from the desk drawer.
The finished structure is objectively terrible.
Sheets at strange angles. One wall leaning suspiciously.
The structural engineering would not survive professional review.
But it has a door. A low flap of fabric that requires us to duck beneath it.
Inside, the floor is nothing but blankets and cushions.
Kit crawls in first. I follow. The space is small enough that we have no choice but to stay close. He lines Duffy and the new bunny against the far wall of cushions. I prop my phone against a pillow. Studio Ghibli.
Ponyo.
“Hungry?”
Kit nods. Doesn’t look at me. His attention has already moved to the screen, following the opening credits. He might be nonverbal for a while. It happens sometimes when he slips deeply into Little space, especially after being frightened this badly.
That’s fine. I don’t need words from him. I order McDonald’s on my phone.
Something I would normally consider grounds for intervention.
Fast food in an apartment where meals are cooked from actual ingredients and eaten at an actual table.
Today, I don’t care. When it arrives twenty minutes later, we eat it inside the fort.
Fries straight from the paper bag. Nuggets dipped in sweet-and-sour sauce.
Kit curled against my side beneath the sheet roof while a cartoon plays on my phone.
The battery ticks down. Eighty percent. Sixty-three. Fifty-two. Forty-eight.
Kit notices. His eyes narrow. Then he giggles. The first sound that has felt completely like him since I came through the door. He points at the battery indicator.
“You’d be punished if you were me.”
I look at the number. Then at him.
“Good thing I’m the Daddy and I wrote the rule.”
“Corrupt system.”
His mouth twitches. I kiss his forehead. There he is.