“Hey, Ruby-Roo, come and give me a hug.” Dr Chan enters the small consulting room and drops to her knees. She offers up her sweetest smile, which cuts no ice with my daughter. The check-ups may have reduced in frequency to a more positive quarterly set of blood tests, but they are still blood tests, and Ruby is not a fan. Although Dr Chan is probably her favourite physician to date—and by favourite, I mean she gives her the silent treatment and hasn’t bitten her…yet. There is nothing more heartbreaking than pinning Ruby to my chest while she howls in agony as blood is drawn from her tiny arm each month and the fact that it’s now every three months doesn’t make it any easier.
“Maybe next time.” Dr Chan fishes in her pocket for a lollipop and hands it to me. I bite back a knowing smirk, and I’m a little ashamed that I’m fully aware of the reason she’s reluctant to hand the treat directly to Ruby. She’s a biter. It’s a self-defence thing. She’s distraught, in pain, and in floods of tears, yet I still have to scold her, and I feel like a complete monster. I deal with sick children everyday, and it never gets easy. It’s very often heartbreaking, yet that’s nothing compared to the impotent desperation and desolation of caring for one’s own.
Ruby was born early, almost two months early and has had BDP, bronchopulmonary dysplasia since birth. Her lungs were damaged at birth by the use of the ventilator and oxygen, and now she frequently struggles with her breathing. In many cases, as the patient gets older, the damage may correct itself, and with every check-up, I hope the doctor will tell me exactly that. She also has an impaired immune system and seems to catch any bug within a ten block radius. To my constant astonishment neither of these things affect her zest, infectious joy, and ability to exponentially enrich my life every single day.
Dr Chan steps around Ruby who has her arms double folded awkwardly over her chest, her dark scowl evidence of her dislike of anyone donning a white lab coat and wielding a needle.
“I need to take another sample, Regan, I’m sorry.” Dr Chan whispers in my ear, but even if she’d mouthed the words silently, Ruby has had enough of these check-ups to know something bad is about to happen. She rushes to the far corner of the room and starts to shake her head. I get a sick swell in my stomach, and even though I feel the colour drain from my face, I force my brightest smile. I move my position so the good doctor has her back to Ruby and keep my smile fixed and ask very quietly in my most upbeat tone I can muster.
“Why?”
“I just want to send off for a few extra tests.” Our voices are almost inaudible.
“Because?” I hate to be a ballbreaker here, but there has to be a damn good reason for subjecting Ruby to more pain.
“Her cell count is a little low.” She tilts her head with understanding, and I half want to push it back upright. I don’t need to see that sympathetic tilt, not today, not ever.
“White or red?”
“White count is elevated, but RBCs are low, as are her platelets. It’s most likely another infection, but I want to make sure.” Dr Chan shows me the results of Ruby’s most recent test.
“Of course,” Oh, god, Oh, god! I suck in a deep, steady breath that does nothing to calm the chaos of anxiety and fear. I hate my job. I hate that my job means I know all the worst outcomes before I can begin to recall the optimistic ones. I look over at Ruby who is now mumbling a mantra of no- no -no with an occasional, no way, Momma, for added emphasis and guilt. “You’re not going to get anywhere near her, you know that, don’t you?” I state and Dr Chan slowly nods her agreement. She taps her pen on her bottom lip, regarding Ruby warily.
“What do you suggest?”
“Chloroform.” I quip, fear trumping my ability to filter the connection from brain to mouth.
“A little extreme.” Dr Chan’s eyes widen with horror.
“Sorry, inappropriate humour is my default when I’m scared shh…less.” I manage to censor my language since I’m now no longer whispering.
“Regan, stop hearing zebras.” Dr Chan rubs one of my arms, which, like Ruby’s tight little protective form, is folded across my waist. I feel like I’m trying to hold myself together. I know Dr Chan is right. and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. I’m hearing hooves, seeing zebras, and already praying it’s not leukaemia.
“It’s probably just an infection.” I nod and smile in agreement because that’s what you do in these situations. I’ve seen it a hundred times on the faces of terrified parents as they process the incomprehensible.
“It’s always so much harder treating people in the profession,” Dr Chan sighs, and I let out a flat, humourless laugh.
“Oh, I think Google has levelled that playing field. Isn’t everyone an expert now?” I push down the rising tide of answerable questions and carry on, because that’s what people do too.
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Okay.” I give a curt nod and a tight smile, stoic and determined to get this done and dusted. I walk over to Ruby and drop down onto my haunches so we are eye level. I pull one of her hands free and try to ease her fingers out of the tight fist she has clenched. She lets me and that trust makes me buckle with the weight of what I have to ask. “Hey, baby girl, I’m really sorry, but Dr Chan needs a little bit more of your blood.”
“No!” Her lip wobbles, her face wrinkles with sorrow, and huge tears burst like a dam and flood her tiny face. She doesn’t howl or screech, she just sobs and trembles, and it’s me that wants to howl.
“I know, baby. Please don’t cry. I’ll take you to the gift shop, and you can choose any sweet at all…even one of the boxes.” My bribery knows no bounds.
“Momma, no, please, it hurts. Please don’t let them hurt me.” Oh, god. I drop my head in my hands, guilt-ridden and impotent. I turn to face Dr Chan, and before I make eye contact, I snap back around, too late to rectify my mistake. I’d let go!
“Ruby! Wait, no!” I call out as she slips like an eel through my outstretched hands and bolts to the door. She pulls the handle and dashes through the tiny gap, a blur of long dark curls, bright blue Disney princess costume and black patent mini Doc Marten boots. I scramble to my feet and race to catch her.
She disappears around the corner at the end of the long sterile corridor. I sprint, weaving through the nurses, patients, gurneys, and everything else that seems to be gathered just to aid her escape. Man, she’s fast for a child with restricted lung capacity.
I skid around the corner and come to a comical halt, face-to-face with Ruby at my eye level, held high on Joel’s hip.
“Joel, what are you doing here?” The shock makes my question more an aggressive accusation. He ignores me, his sole focus on Ruby. I’m right to be surprised. It’s not like he’s ventured into the wrong part of the hospital. This is a whole other hospital, all the way across town from where we both work.
“Hey, there, Ruby, or is it Elsa?” He points to the centre of her silky Princess costume from Frozen that she insisted on wearing today. “Why all the tears, princess?”
“Momma wants the doctors to hurt me again.” She twists the words to pierce right through me, and the thing is, I know she doesn’t mean to. She just tells the truth as her five-year-old brain sees it. I do want her to take another blood test.
“Ruby, I…” My shoulders sag, and my eyes glaze with sadness and defeat.
“Hey, Regan, it’s all right. Come on, I can’t have the two prettiest girls in the whole world crying on me. What will everyone think?” His tone is joking. He stares at me with concern and confusion etching his handsome features. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”
“Ruby’s here for her check-up, and they need some more blood.” I blink back the threat of tears and focus on what needs to be done, not how frustrating and awful that is making me feel.
“Why here at Mercy, why not at CMC?”
“I work at CMC.”
“And?”
“And it’s no one’s business, including yours, where I choose to take Ruby for her check-up.” I reach for Ruby, and she shakes her head and snuggles against Joel’s chest, which does strange things to my insides. I’m torn between devastation that she won’t come to me, even if I totally understand why, and a warm, fuzzy feeling that she’s drawing comfort from a man I—
“What’s the check-up about?” Joel interrupts my messed up mind and thankfully slams that door well and truly shut with his intrusive question.
“Which bit of not your business do you need me to explain exactly?” I snap.
“Fine, you’re right. This has nothing to do with me.” He lifts Ruby from his side and carefully hands her to me. I’m relieved when she reaches for me and thankful she really isn’t one to hold her grudge against me for too long. I take her and relish the way her small body instinctively wraps around mine, even if she is mad at me.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it. I just hate being a momma sometimes.” My arms constrict like a snake, and I hug her so tight my voice catches with the emotion surging through me. I never knew it was possible to love this hard.
“You want me to do it?”
“You that keen to have another female hate you on sight?” I scoff.
“Oh, Reggie, you couldn’t hate me if you tried.” He winks, and his cocky arrogance washes over me like an ice bucket challenge.
“The day’s not over yet, Doctor.” I state emphatically and feel Ruby stiffen in my arms at the title. “Did you forget Joel is a doctor, Ruby? That would explain the uncharacteristic cuddle,” I muse, but she shakes her head.
“I’m a very cuddly person, and I’m a very special doctor.” He tucks Ruby’s long lock behind her ear and bops her button nose. She giggles and I feel her relax and become putty in my arms. “Hey, Ruby, I bet I can take your blood without you feeling a thing.”
“No,” she answers, but her body doesn’t tense, which is definitely a first and encouraging. I don’t tell Joel that.
“You’re going to need to up your game if you think she’s going to fall for that one, Dr Prescott.”
“So it would seem.” He taps his lip with his forefinger, his face the picture of someone deep in thought. Ruby giggles with the expressions he pulls, first seemingly coming to a perfect solution and then flipping to one-eighty and going back to the drawing board. He finally raises his finger and offers his suggestion with all seriousness. “Ruby, how about if you let me take your blood, I let you take some of mine.”
“What?” My jaw drops.
“Really?” Ruby asks with awe, and I’m dumbstruck at his ridiculous suggestion.
“Sure, with a little help from your momma, what do you think?” He leans in conspiratorially, his caveat lessens the potential for a bloodbath, but I’m not sure Ruby will be swayed.
“All right.” She answers before my mistake takes a firm bite out of my ass.
“You know there’s no way the hospital will let you do that.” The voice of reason raises its head, even if I’m curious if this is a genuine offer, and hopeful it is, because a compliant Ruby is so much better than a shaking, screaming, terrified Ruby.
“Then we won’t tell them.” He replies in a tone that should be punctuated with ‘duh’ because I’m obviously the idiot here.
“At least you won’t get fired unless you work here too.”
“I don’t work here, I was just visiting.” He pauses and I’m surprised when he volunteers more. I wanted to, but I wasn’t going to ask. “Visiting a friend.”
And there it is.
“Well, at least you’re keeping your booty calls out of our workplace. I suppose that’s an improvement.” My tone drips with bitter jealousy. I wish this didn’t bother me so much, and I really wish I could hide the fact that it does, even a little bit would be good. I break the intense eye contact, afraid if my tone hasn’t already given away my mess of emotions, staring into my eyes like he is definitely would. I’m grateful when he chooses to throw me a welcome bone.
“Not a booty call. My sister is here having some tests. She found a lump on her breast, that’s why she came to see me at Christmas,” he clarifies, and I’m taken aback and a little ashamed at my immediate gutter assumption.
“Oh, Joel, I’m sorry, but why say friend?”
“I wasn’t going to say anything, Regan. Apparently, this isn’t a sharing situation,” he points out with a flat expression and a thick helping of attitude. “I thought ‘friend’ was vague enough, then I realised how it would sound to you. Anyway, it’s fine; it was benign. Trinity is going to be fine.”
“Oh, I’m glad.” Ruby starts to wriggle, and I let her slide to the floor. She slips between us and takes my hand, then Joel’s, tugging us forward, back toward Dr Chan’s consulting room. “You know I didn’t even know you had a sister. Was she kept locked in a tower until she was twenty-one or something?”
“Sort of, and she’s my stepsister. She went to boarding school full-time, and I mean full-time. She rarely came home at all, and when she did…well, honestly, she was a bit of a freak.”
“The woman I saw at Christmas, the one that looked like she belonged on the cover of Vogue you mean? She’s a freak?”
“Was…was a freak. She’s cool now, but back then, when she did come home for the holidays she never spoke. She locked herself in her room, ate her meals there, and only came out when her father ordered her to. I was actually glad when she went back to school; the tension in the house was palpable. Anyway, a few years ago, she made contact, we had lunch, and she was like a whole other person. She’s great, funny, and intelligent. In fact, I think she’d give Harper a run for her money in the brains department. She travels a lot with her job, so I don’t see her very often, and she still doesn’t come to family gatherings unless Bradford demands it, but she’s nice. She’d like you.” he adds, and I can’t help the hot flash with the memory of me spread-eagled on Joel’s kitchen counter last Christmas Eve.
“Oh, I’m sure, especially after our first introduction.”
“Fair point.” He wiggles his brow playfully, and his eyes shine wickedly, no doubt with the very same image. “She’s cool and all, but don’t get me wrong, she’s extremely judgmental.”
“I won’t hold that against her; with you, there’s a lot to judge.”
“Cute. Don’t you ever get vertigo?”
“Eh?”
“Up on that high horse of yours.”
“I don’t have a high horse, Joel, I have history…with you. Trust me, judgment is justified.”
“Whatever,” He shrugs off the inferred character attack, and I’m happy not to elaborate. I’m glad he decides to enlighten me a little more regarding Trinity instead. “Anyway, it turns out she was never a freak; she just hated her father so much she preferred to stay away. I can’t fault her for that. The guy’s an asshole.”
“Your mother clearly doesn’t think so.”
“My mother has been in a drunken stupor since my father died. I doubt she even knows Bradford is her second husband, let alone that she also has a stepdaughter.”
“I’m sorry.” He reaches Dr Chan’s room, and I turn to face him. My hand absently strokes the side of his face, and his day-old stubble scratches my soft palm. He presses against my touch but quickly lifts his head and breaks the contact.
“First world problem, Reggie, first world problems.” He shrugs, and I only partially believe his attempt at an airy dismissal.
“I guess. Still it must have been lonely.” I poke where I know I’m not wanted.
“Family is overrated. Lonely worked fine for me. I had my friends.” His jaw tightens. I can feel the shutters coming down, and I understand better than most. Some things are not for sharing.
“Amen to that.” I exhale and force out a light laugh, trying to lift the weighty dark cloud that has started to sink down around us both. “Are you sure you want to do this? Because you can’t renege on this little one. She’s like an elephant; she never forgets.” Ruby looks up as we both look down, her smile fixed and fearless, and I couldn’t be prouder.
“Man of my word,” he states as if carving each word in stone. He pushes the handle on the door, swings it wide, and motions for us both to enter.
“We’ll see.” I say as I pass in front of him. His arm slices down and stops me right on the threshold. My breath catches as his lips brush the side of my face. His hot breath washes over my face, down the side of my neck, and I lean to give him all the access he might need. Jeeze, Regan, show some restraint.
“Man. Of. My. Word.” He sears each word on my skin with his scorching breath, and I swear he’s so close, those words are being etched somewhere deep inside of me as a permanent reminder of a sinful threat or a delicious promise. I believe him. Unfortunately, that’s the problem.