My eyes were starting to blur with fatigue and it was only ten p.m. The night before had been rough, with Colin unwilling to sleep for more than an hour at a time. He was eating just fine and kept filling his diapers so according to my internet research on the habits of babies, there was no cause for alarm. I checked his gums because I read somewhere that sometimes babies can start teething early but his gums looked pink and not remotely swollen.
Kathleen probably would have snapped her fingers and known instantly what the problem was but calling Kathleen would mean I’d have to talk to Kathleen. Talking to Kathleen meant getting an earful about forgotten diaper bags and improper bottle etiquette. After our testy meeting down at the store the other day I figured we needed some space.
Jane and Kevin visited in the late afternoon and I was glad to hand Colin off to them for a few minutes so I could have the luxury of a ten minute shower.
But once my aunt and her boyfriend were gone I was on my own again, wearing out the hardwood floors as I walked Colin back and forth and back again because he started crying every time I put him down. I didn’t know how much crying a typical baby did but it seemed this kid was shooting for a world record. He finally fell asleep about an hour after the sun went down and I would have been happy to follow his example if I didn’t have a pile of work to deal with.
So instead of catching up on some much needed sleep I was at the kitchen table, rubbing my eyes in between tweaking the web page of a Portland-based steakhouse chain I’d done projects for in the past.
Roxie snored underneath the table but she jumped up when I got to my feet. I’d barely made a dent in my task list but the rest would have to wait. I stretched my fingertips toward the ceiling and heard my joints pop.
There were many evenings when I’d sat in this kitchen for hours because my dad had a rule about cleaning your plate before leaving the table. I didn’t like visiting my father. My mother always indulged my picky eating habits, preparing special meals that fit my tastes. It was a different story when I came to Hawk Valley. Chris Ryan was baffled by an eight year old who wouldn’t eat red meat and had no interest in catching fish at the lake up at the mountain cabin. On one of those trips I threw down my pole and told him we should leave the fish alone because they were better off where they were. He turned a cold eye in my direction and warned me to pick up the pole and start catching fish like a normal kid or else I could walk back down the damn mountain.
“Your problem is that your mother spoils you. That girl never did have any sense.”
I always knew my parents didn’t like each other. It must have been rough, trying to raise a child with a person you can’t stand. But my mother never said a bad word about Chris Ryan directly to me. I never told her that he didn’t return the favor.
That was the last time my father and I went fishing together. In an act of defiance I did pick up that pole and I stayed put until I had caught twice as many fish as he did. Then when his back was turned I dumped the ice chest full of dead fish into the muddy lake water.
He didn’t speak to me for the rest of the day.
The dog let out a soft whine and I was wrenched out of old memories.
“Need to go out?” I asked and her tail wagged. She was way ahead of me by the time I got to the back door.
I watched her bound into the darkness and wondered what my dad would think about a dog living in his house. He’d always been strongly anti-pet, at least pets that weighed more than a pound, only allowing small rodents that could be caged and had limited life expectancies. The only other time I’d had a dog was at my mother’s house in Phoenix. His name was Captain and he was an energetic border collie who shadowed my every move when I was home. He was killed the same night she was.
Roxie responded to my low whistle and raced back inside. I rewarded her with a pat on the head.
“Good girl.”
The dog flapped her tail and accidentally knocked over a blue porcelain vase that had been perched on a low table. I watched it fall to the hard floor and crack into several pieces, wincing at the noise and then waiting for the inevitable cry from upstairs. When it came the sound was shrill and piercing, loud even for him.
I bolted into action, taking the stairs three at a time to get to Colin’s room. He kept screaming when I picked him up, screamed louder when I held him close, arched his back and shrieked like a banshee when I checked his diaper. Nothing comforted him. His diaper was dry. He didn’t want a bottle. He didn’t want to be held. I even tried putting him in the car seat and driving him around the block but that didn’t quiet him at all so I gave up and brought him back home.
“What’s the matter with my favorite buddy?” I said, trying to sound all goo goo ridiculous like Kathleen did when she talked to him but he only screamed some more.
I tried rocking him in a living room chair but he didn’t want that either. His cries were relentless, strident. The sounded full of pain and they gutted me like no other sound ever had before. I held my brother’s struggling little body close and pressed my lips to his forehead.
Hot. Too hot.
Panic rose instantly. He was sick. That’s why he’d been crying so much, why he couldn’t be consoled. I should have known. I should have thought of it. A parent would have realized sooner.
“It’ll be okay, Colin. You’ll be okay.” My voice was artificial, high and cheerful.
I cradled him in one arm and retrieved my laptop with the other. I searched the words ‘baby fever’. I searched the words ‘sick baby’. I searched the words ‘sick baby fever crying’. The results were so varied they were of little use. Colin might be getting a cold or he might have meningitis. I didn’t know if he’d had any shots. I didn’t know who his doctor was. At some point Kathleen had rattled off that information but it was one of those times when I was tired of listening to her talk and tuned her out.
She’d also given me her phone number but I hadn’t added it to my contact list. My only option was to head upstairs and dig through my laundry to find the pocket where I’d shoved her business card the other day. Luckily her cell number was listed on the bottom. She answered on the second ring.
“He’s sick,” I blurted out a split second after she said hello.
If Kathleen had been sleeping when I called she was awake and alert now. “Nash? Colin’s sick?”
“Yeah. He’s running a fever.”
“How high?”
I paced the floor with the phone in my ear and my crying brother in my arms. “I don’t know. He feels hot and he’s been crying on and off since last night and I thought everything was fine when he fell asleep but he started crying again and when I touched his head I noticed how hot he was.”
It was a jumbled babble of words but Kathleen understood.
“Okay, listen. The first thing you need to do is give him a dose of ibuprofen to get the fever down. Look in the diaper bag in his room. There should be a bottle in there with a dropper that will allow you to dispense the proper dosage directly into his mouth. Now let me ask you, has he been eating?”
I’d made my way to Colin’s room and was already rooting around in the diaper bag. “Yeah, he’s been eating.”
“Peeing? Pooping?”
“Both.”
“Does he seem listless? Lethargic?”
I set the screaming baby down on the changing table. “Does he sound listless?”
“Do you see a rash anywhere?”
I unsnapped his outfit and examined him. “No.” The medicine was in my hand. I scanned the bottle for the dosage and wasted no time filling the dropper before depositing the contents into Colin’s mouth. He scrunched his mouth up and was silent for a second, then resumed screaming.
“Should I take him to the hospital?” I asked.
“Hawk General closed two years ago so the nearest hospital is forty five minutes away. There’s a brand new urgent care facility that just opened up on Cottonwood Road, right off I-95. They probably won’t be busy. I’ll meet you over there.”
I was going to tell Kathleen that she didn’t need to do that. It was late and she had a kid of her own to take care of. But I was relieved she was coming. Kathleen with her take charge, know-it-all attitude was exactly what Colin needed right now.
“Thank you,” I said and snapped Colin back into his outfit.
This time I didn’t forget to bring the diaper bag when I left the house. The urgent care was a ten-minute drive away and there were only two other patients in the waiting room. I was halfway finished with filling out my life story on a clipboard full of papers when Kathleen rushed in. I could admit I was damn glad to see her.
“How is he?” She sat in the yellow plastic chair right beside me and reached for Colin, unbuckling him from his car seat.
“Much calmer now,” I said. Colin had fallen asleep on the drive and stayed that way even when I brought him into the brightly lit building. His head felt cooler too.
“My poor baby,” Kathleen murmured, kissing his face and rocking him in her arms. It was tough to get rid of the lump in my throat when I watched her hold my baby brother. She really loved that kid. She loved him every bit as much as I did.
“I dropped Emma off at my mom’s,” Kathleen said, still staring down at Colin. “She can keep her overnight.”
Kathleen managed to look excellent even at this time of night under the harsh lights of the urgent care waiting room. She wore a blue v-neck tee and a loose skirt that reached to her ankles. Her wild red curls spilled over her shoulders and she wore no makeup. She didn’t need any. And I couldn’t be sure but from this angle I guessed she wasn’t wearing a bra.
I’m such a fucking dick.
This girl comes out in the middle of the night to help me out in a crisis and all I can do is check out her tits.
I stopped watching Kathleen and returned to the tedium of my paperwork. “Sorry if I woke you up.”
“You didn’t. I had a paper to write.”
Next to a line that said ‘Allergies’ I wrote a question mark. “That’s right, you mentioned you were doing online school. What are you studying?”
“Accounting. I’d like to get my CPA license someday.”
“That’s nice.”
“Not really. But it’s a good career that will pay the bills.”
I studied her again. Colin slept on her shoulder now while she tenderly rubbed his back. “What did you want to do instead?”
A sad smile touched her lips. “It took me a little while to find my niche but I was a philosophy major.”
“Impressive.”
“I wanted to be a university professor. Get a PhD so I could have some fancy letters after my name, perhaps teach overseas for a while.”
Those plans sounded more like the Kathleen Doyle who was hyped as the town prodigy, the girl who skipped a couple of grades and braved the halls of Hawk Valley High ahead of schedule, ignoring all the snickering over her flat chested little kid appearance.
“And yet you became a bookkeeper in Hawk Valley,” I said and immediately wished I hadn’t. I was thinking aloud, wondering about the fork in the road of Kathleen Doyle’s life.
“Emma,” she said by way of explanation and her smile was no longer sad.
I should have figured that out. Kathleen was a few years younger than me, probably twenty-three. She’d graduated early, valedictorian of my class, headed off to college with big dreams and then came back home after she got knocked up by some guy she obviously didn’t want to talk about. My own parents had been young and foolish when I joined the world so I knew all about how the arrival of a kid could change a life’s trajectory.
“Do you have any idea much more I could have done if you hadn’t been born?”
My father had been a little drunk when he said that and we’d just had another of our infamous fights. I was probably fifteen at the time. Chris Ryan didn’t apologize very often but the next day he did apologize for saying those words. He stood there in the doorway of my bedroom, his hands crossed over his chest, his eyes on the floor as he said he was sorry. He’d been angry. He’d had too many beers. He didn’t mean what he said. I believed him. He wanted me to say something too, some acknowledgement of forgiveness. But I stubbornly stared down at my homework and said nothing.
“Colin Ryan?”
The nurse in purple scrubs was standing there waiting. Kathleen carried Colin while I followed with the car seat and diaper bag.
“You just have to leave Mommy’s arms for a second,” the nurse said when it was time to place Colin on the scale. “Fourteen pounds, two ounces.”
“Is that good?” I asked, sounding as anxious as I felt.
The nurse gave me an indulgent grin. She looked young, really young. She’d probably started nursing the day before yesterday. “It’s fine. You two must be first time parents?”
“No,” said Kathleen and left it at that.
The nurse promised the doctor would be in shortly and left us alone. Colin was starting to fuss so Kathleen paced the short length of the room to quiet him down.
“Want me to take him?” I asked.
She started to say no, but then handed him over. “If you want to.”
I was getting used to the feel of his tiny body against my chest. Holding him now felt natural.
“We’ll get you feeling all better soon,” I said in his little ear. When I looked up my eyes found Kathleen’s. Her eyes were striking, a light green I had never seen on anyone else.
The doctor didn’t keep us waiting long. I didn’t remember her but she knew who I was. She lived in town. She’d been on some local charity board or something with Heather.
“Double ear infection,” she announced a few minutes later after examining Colin. “That would explain the fever and the fussiness. Other than that he looks perfect so I’ll write you a prescription and you can take this little guy home.”
“Thank you, Dr. Crawford,” Kathleen said.
“You’re very welcome,” said Dr. Crawford. She scribbled some notes on a piece of paper and then looked directly at me. “Once again, I’m so very sorry for your loss. I still can’t believe it.” Her eyes moved to Colin and her expression saddened visibly. “Please let me know if there’s ever anything I can do.”
It was the same sentiment repeated to me by dozens of people since the night I arrived in Hawk Valley. A useless, well meaning ‘thoughts and prayers’ kind of thing to say. I wished there was something they could do.
“I appreciate that,” I told the doctor before she left the room.
Kathleen knew where there was a twenty-four hour pharmacy and insisted on picking up the prescription herself.
“You just get this handsome little man home,” she said. “It won’t take me long to fill this and we can give him the first dose right away.”
“Thanks,” I said. The word felt inadequate but it was all I had to offer.
She smiled. “Emma’s had her share of ear infections. They clear up quickly once the antibiotics kick in.”
“Seriously, Kathleen,” I said as Colin let out a sleepy sigh on my shoulder. “I owe you for this.”
She reached out and touched Colin’s head, her fingertips brushing my shoulder in the process. “Nonsense. I’ll always be there for Colin. And for you.”
“I’m lucky to have you,” I said, not realizing the possible double meaning of the words until I heard them out loud.
Kathleen only blushed and looked away.
I was happy to take Colin home and wait for her to show up with the medicine. It was nice, this feeling of cooperation for the sake of a child we both cared about. And it was good to have a friend. I didn’t keep too many of those around and that never bothered me. But lately I was starting to feel the deficit. And yes, I did think of Kathleen as a friend.
A friend with a sinful body, sexy hair and a dazzling smile.
A friend who was kind and generous, if a little bossy.
A friend who got my dick hard if I stared at her for too long.
I liked Kathleen. I respected her. And I couldn’t stop wanting to fuck her if I tried.