Chapter 24
Iam eating left over pizza for a late breakfast while I stare at the poor fish swimming in the giant glass serving bowl it now calls home.
After I watch it complete a sad half lap, I decide on taking a ridiculously long shower. I am halfway to the bathroom when I hear a buzzing coming from the floor somewhere. I dig around in the mess of blankets until I find my phone that has twelve missed calls from Riley.
I click on the most recent voicemail she left.
“Hannah? It’s Riley. I’m with Winnie. We’re in an ambulance going to the emergency room in Marnmouth. Someone brought sushi for snack, and she tried some. I am so sorry. Please call me back.”
Immediately, my body is flushed with a white-hot panic, and I am up with my keys and flying down the steps only to crash into a body coming up to the door. There isn’t a single other thought in my brain other than getting to her.
“Baby, what’s wrong?”
Tanner is standing there with yellow flowers in one hand and holding me with the other.
“I— it’s Winnie, she had sushi, and she went by ambulance to Marnmouth and I missed the calls—”
“I’ll drive,” he says and we run to his truck.
“Last time she had it, her throat started to close, and she knows to be careful, and I have no idea what she was thinking.” I scroll through my phone. “Oh my God Riley had been calling me, and I didn’t have my phone on me, it was on the floor and I should have had it with me and—"
“Hannah.” Tanner’s tone stops me, and I realize he has his hand on my knee.
Yesterday, this would have sent every butterfly in my belly into flight, but right now, I think it’s the only thing keeping my feet on the ground.
“Breathe. This isn’t your fault or Winnie’s.
Accidents happen. Let’s get you to the hospital and see her.
They called the ambulance. They have her. ”
“But what if they didn’t get her in time and if I had answered my phone she would have been—”
“No. Don’t catastrophize. That’s not helping you or her.”
We are flying out of town and over to Marnmouth and I’m praying we don’t get pulled over while also wishing he could drive faster. He lifts my hand and presses his lip against the back of my hand. Not quite a kiss but maybe more than just a kiss.
Tanner pulls up to the curb of the emergency room and is unlocking the door before he even fully stops.
“Go,” he says. “I’ll find you.”
I leap from the car and run to the lady at the front desk.
“Can I help—”
“Winifred Forrest,” I gasp. “My daughter, she was just brought in, fish allergy, she’s five, and I—”
“Come with me.” The woman stands and leads me back behind keycard access doors. God, every inch of my body wants to be running, but this woman won’t move faster than a damn sloth.
“Please,” I insist. “Can you just tell me where—”
She motions to the left. “Here she is.”
In the curtain-walled room, Winnie is hooked up to an IV, oxygen, and other machines. Her little sleeping face is swollen and covered in a deep red rash. I almost vomit.
“Winnie.” I collapse in the chair next to her. “Oh, Winnie honey.”
She doesn’t stir. She lays there with her little chest rising and lowering.
“Hannah—”
I blink up and find Riley sitting there with flushed cheeks and a panic stricken look on her face as she clutches Winnie’s drawstring bag.
“I am so sorry. The boy was sneaking his snack, and I don’t think Winnie understood that it had fish in it and I caught it almost immediately, but she had an almost immediate reaction—”
“Oh good, you must be Mom.”
I turn from Riley and see a woman standing there through my tear puddled eyes. She has deeply wrinkled skin, bright eyes and is wearing blue scrubs. “I'm Noel, I’m the nurse on shift.”
“How long has she been here?”
She glances up at the clock. “Thirty minutes?”
“Oh my God.”
“She’s stable. I can’t speak too much without the doctor, but she’s stable and responding to medication. She just fell asleep.”
I don’t say anything. I can’t say anything. A million thoughts and questions spin in my mind, but I can’t seem to get any of them out.
“Your wife and daughter are in here, sir.”
In my anxiety, I expect to see Ethan. I expect his harsh eyes and cold glare, but instead, instant relief floods my system when it’s Tanner that walks through the curtain. He blinks at Riley and she gives a small smile.
“I’ll go now.” She stands and wrings her hands together. “Again, I am so sorry.”
“No.” I shake my head. “Don’t be sorry. You were there. You didn’t leave her. You called and helped. Thank you.”
She hands me Winnie’s bag, tips her head to Tanner, then slips away.
Tanner drops next to me. “How is she?”
I open my mouth to speak but not a single word correlates with any other.
“Good,” the nurse says. “She’s not quite out of the woods, but she’s stable.”
“How are you?” he asks and squats down in front of me.
His hands hold my thighs as he gazes up at me, but all I can do is look at this rash covered child and feel every ounce of guilt my heart can wring out.
It’s heavy and makes my shoulders shake with tears.
“Oh babe.” He rubs my legs and lets me cry.
“Hi Mom and Dad.” A man in a white coat enters now pulling a rolling chair over to sit with us.
“I'm Doctor Robinson. I’ve been overseeing Winifred here since she came in.”
“Winnie,” I choke out. “She doesn’t like when we call her Winifred.”
The doctor’s smile softens. “Right. Winnie. She’s stable.
She went into a pretty severe anaphylactic shock as the result of eating sushi from a friend at camp.
The center said someone brought it as a snack and was sneaking pieces from his bag to friends without staff’s knowledge.
However, if Riley Morton hadn’t acted as quickly as she did, I think we would be looking at a much worse situation.
Right now, she is responding very well to medication, and we have her asleep to make her more comfortable.
We will be getting her a room within the hour and want to keep her overnight for observation. What questions do you have?”
I open my mouth, but the words are all still tangled. My eyes burn with tears, and my own throat feels like it’s closing in.
“Was she administered her EpiPen?” Tanner’s voice breaks through my silence as if he has read, or at least translated, the mess that is my mind. “It’s kept in the front zipper of her drawstring bag.”
“Yes. Ms. Morton applied it on the scene.”
“How long until she wakes up?” Tanner asks, his hand firmly grasping my leg.
“In an hour or two we will probably start to wake her up.”
“And she’ll be okay?”
The doctor smiles. “Yes. She should make a full recovery, and quickly, I presume, as well.”
I could almost weep at the doctor’s feet, and I could kiss Tanner for asking questions when I can’t even think past my own nose. The doctor slips back out of the curtain and I squeeze Winnie's hand.
“Wife and Daughter?” I question now and a sheepish grin grows across his face.
“Don’t think for one second I wasn’t going to do anything in my power to get to you two.”
The lights are dim in the hospital room, Tanner is on the couch, and I sit in a chair pulled up to Winnie’s side. Tanner must have called them, because it doesn’t take long for Rhett and Lauren to arrive. They sneak in almost silently with panic on both of their faces.
“She’s okay,” I tell them. “They have her sleeping for a little longer, but she’ll be okay.”
Lauren’s chest deflates as she sits on the edge of the bed. She smiles when her eyes catch the yellow flowers on Winnie's table. Tanner said they were originally for me as another apology for the goldfish and handcuffs from the fair. They’re Winnie’s now.
The hours drain by as we sit and stare at Winnie.
I don’t know how many more times I can look at the same wires and tubes coming in and out of my child, or the rash on her face.
My eyes are on a loop and it’s making me motion sick.
Then, there’s a snore, her shoulders shiver, and she turns her head to the side.
“Mommy?” she croaks.
I squeeze her hand. “Bug, I'm right here.”
“Where my sheep?”
“What? Honey we can’t bring sheep to a hospital.”
“No, my Tanner sheep.”
Her Tanner sheep. The stuffed animal from the fair.
“Baby it’s on your bed at home.” I tell her.
“I’ll go get it.” Rhett pops to his feet. “What else do you need kid?”
“My blanky,” she says and Rhett is gone a moment later.
Instantly, all her grownup-ness I have seen this summer melts back into innocence. She looks younger and smaller under the hospital blanket. Her cheeks rosy, eyes glassy, and her dry lips slightly protruding.
“Are those flowers mine?” she asks and I want to cry at her hoarse voice.
I swipe my tear away, so she doesn’t see. Even though now, they’re tears of joy.
“Yeah.” Tanner has appeared at my side, and he pats her foot through the blanket. “They’re all yours. Eric and Ava helped pick them out.”
She smiles. “Does that mean you’re my boyfriend if you bring me flowers?”
A laugh bubbles up in the room, being the exact thing we all needed. “Bug, you know flowers doesn’t mean someone is your boyfriend.”
“But boyfriends and girlfriends do hold hands.” She smirks. “And you guys hold hands.”
“I agree.” Lauren chimes in.
“Let’s not worry about that right now,” I tell them both and smooth Winnie’s hair. “How are you feeling?”
“Sleepy.”
She manages to eat some Jello before Rhett arrives with her blanket and Tanner sheep. The moment she cuddles it, she drifts back asleep. Rhett and Lauren head out after dinner, which consisted of cafeteria food Rhett smuggled up to the room.
Tanner doesn’t leave. He calls off work for today and tomorrow. I know if I insisted, he would leave but I also really don’t want him to. In fact, there is nobody else I want to be here with me.
It’s nearly midnight when Winnie stirs in her bed again.
“Mommy,” she says and stretches. “My legs feel runny.”
“Runny?”
She starts to giggle, and the giggle turns into a full-on belly laugh. Tanner and I just blink at each other then back at her.
“What’s so funny?”
“Runny,” she repeats.
Soon she’s buzzing, talking a million miles an hour, wanting to get up, wanting to run. Her words are loopy and her sentences nonsensical.
“My legs feel runny,” she says again and kicks them in the bed when the nurse we waved down comes to check in.
“Let me see if I can have the kids’ playroom opened to get those legs moving.”
Ten minutes later, we are sitting in the chairs along the wall of the playroom and Winnie is bounding around. Mr. Nurse, as Winnie is now calling him, is sitting with us, arms crossed and laughing.
“The Epinephrine has caught up to her,” he says. “She will probably sleep good here in an hour or so.”
And he’s right. Within an hour, we are back in the room and Winnie is sound asleep. A grown-man-snoring, drool-puddle, heavy-as-a-log kind of sleep. I join Tanner on the uncomfortable couch, right under his arm.
“Are they going to kick you out when they realize you aren’t actually my husband?” I ask.
He leans back, tips his hat over his eyes and pulls me in closer under his arm. “I’d like to see them try.”