Chapter 3 - The Hospital Room and the Unanswered Calls
The emergency department at St. Jude’s was lit by harsh, buzzing fluorescent tubes that made everyone look like a ghost.
I sat in a hard plastic chair in Treatment Room 4, holding a small, pre-mixed bottle of infant formula that a pediatric nurse had brought for Leo. My tiny son lay tucked in the crook of my left arm, chugging the warm milk with desperate, greedy gulps, his small hand clutched tightly around my pinky finger. His eyes were wide and red-rimmed, but the frantic, terrifying pitch of his screaming had finally subsided into small, rhythmic snuffles.
On the high hospital bed beside us, Clara lay hooked up to an IV pole. A bag of saline solution and a bag of concentrated dextrose were dripping steadily into a vein in the back of her left hand. A monitor above her bed beeped in a slow, reassuring cadence—beep... beep... beep.
Her face was still terribly pale, but some of the warmth had returned to her lips.
"Artie?" she called softly, turning her head on the thin hospital pillow.
I stood up immediately, holding Leo close to my chest, and leaned over her bed. "I'm right here, honey. I'm right here. How are you feeling?"
"Better," she whispered, her eyes brimming with tears. "The doctor said my blood sugar was dropping so fast I was close to a seizure. Artie... I'm so sorry..."
"Shh, stop it," I commanded gently, pressing my lips to her forehead. "You have nothing to be sorry for. You're sick. You're recovering from major surgery."
Clara looked away, staring up at the white ceiling tiles. Her hands gripped the thin hospital blanket. "Is the chicken burned?" she asked suddenly, her voice cracking with a strange, desperate anxiety.
I blinked, taken aback by the question. "What?"
"The chicken," she repeated, her eyes darting back to mine with frantic urgency. "In the oven. Did I burn it? Your mother... she spent forty dollars on that organic whole chicken. She said if I ruined it, it would be a terrible waste of money..."
I felt a sudden, ice-cold knot tighten in the center of my chest.
"Clara," I said, keeping my voice as calm and steady as possible. "I don't give a damn about the chicken. I don't care if the entire house burned down. You collapsed on the floor. Our son was starving. Why were you worrying about a chicken?"
Clara closed her eyes, a heavy tear slipping down her cheek and soaking into the pillowcase. She didn't answer. She pulled her lip between her teeth and turned her head toward the wall.
Right then, my phone began to vibrate in my pocket.
I pulled it out. The screen displayed my mother’s name: Eleanor Carter.
I hit the side button to decline the call. Three seconds later, the phone vibrated again. Same caller. I declined it a second time and shoved the phone back into my pocket.
Ten minutes later, a text message alert chimed softly.
I unlocked the screen and read the preview from my mother:
May you like
“Arthur, I know you are under a lot of stress right now, but running away from the dinner table and leaving me alone in this big house is very disrespectful. When you are ready to be reasonable and mature, we need to sit down privately and discuss Clara’s severe coping problems. She clearly cannot handle being a mother, and we need to make arrangements.”
I stared at the black text on the white screen until the display timed out and went dark. I didn't reply. I didn't forward it. I placed the phone face down on the bedside table, pulled my chair closer to Clara’s bed, and sat there in the dark, watching the saline drip drop by drop until midnight passed.
