The alarm burst through my mind, knocking my dreams aside and insisting with strobe lights and cymbals that I open my eyes and pay attention. My body refused to acknowledge it at first, the awareness that pain would greet my first movements dulling the alarm a little. But then something in my head realized what the alarm was, what it meant, and my eyes popped open.

It was still dark. I reached for my phone, but it wasn’t on the bedside table like it should have been. Gentry shifted next to me and memory of the night before, a little fuzzy at the edges thanks to expensive bourbon, joined the rest of the craziness going on in my sleep-fogged mind.

I pushed the sheets away and sat up, pain rushing through me just as my mind had known it would. I moved a little slower than I should have, searching the floor for the source of the alarm. My phone was tucked in a pocket of Gentry’s cargo pants, the alarm growing louder as I located it and pulled it free.

Thirty-five.

It was the number that broke through the fog and the confusion, the number that pushed the pain to the back burner. I snatched my robe off a hook and took off at a run, Gentry’s mumble lost behind me.

Chloe was already up, methodically preparing a glucagon shot. Noah was lying in the center of his twin bed, sweat so thick on his brow that he looked as though he’d just come in from a rainstorm. I sat beside him and untangled his pump from his pajamas, temporarily shutting it off. The last thing he needed right now was more insulin.

“What was his number at two?” Chloe wanted to know.

I shook my head. I hadn’t checked.

She held out the syringe and I prepared a spot on Noah’s thigh. It only took a second to empty the syringe. When I withdrew the needle, a tiny bit of blood appeared. I wiped it clean with an alcohol square, then turned Noah onto his side. Chloe set an alarm and we waited.

“What’s going on?”

Gentry had followed me across the hall. He leaned against the door frame, his cargo pants back where they belonged, but his shirt still missing. Chloe glanced at him, then gave me a look that was a mixture of curiosity and surprise. Before I could respond to either of them, Noah began to seize.

“Fuck!” Gentry cried as I immediately took hold of my child, cradling his head to keep him from banging it on the headboard.

“Call 9-1-1!” Chloe barked, watching helplessly as he jerked and shook in my arms. I could hear Gentry on the phone almost immediately, could hear the alarms going off on my phone again. His numbers were dropping despite the injection of glucagon, the medication that was supposed to prevent this. But it was too late, obviously. He had too much insulin on board.

“Hold on, baby,” I whispered against his ear as the seizure slowly released his tiny body. “It’s going to be okay. Just hold on.”

I don’t know how much time passed, but the ambulance arrived and the paramedics came in with an IV bag, barking questions. Chloe was a little calmer than either Gentry or I was, so she answered most of the questions. They pushed me out of the way so they could start the IV, radioing a doctor at the hospital to get permission to start him on a glucose drip. Gentry brought me some clothes, standing between me and these strangers working on my child while I quickly pulled them on, my own wounds forgotten.

“I’m going with them,” I announced as the paramedics lifted Noah onto the stretcher.

“That’s fine. We’re going to Baptist.”

“We’ll be right behind you,” Gentry assured me.

It wasn’t the first time I was in the back of an ambulance with Noah, but it was the first in a very long time. Before the CGM, it was much harder to predict when Noah would go too low or too high. But with constant monitoring, predicting these things was a cinch. But only when I paid attention and actually looked at the graphs.

I’d failed my son last night. I let him down and this was my fault.

I held his hand, stroking his head as we drove at a high speed through the predawn streets of downtown. I knew the dangers of a seizure like the one Noah had just had, knew the lasting effects it could potentially leave him. And I knew that once he had one seizure, the chances of another went up exponentially. More than one seizure increased the chances of long-lasting effects.

My son could end up with lifelong learning problems, or worse, because I wasn’t paying attention.

We arrived at the hospital less than ten minutes after we left the front of my dad’s house. Gentry was right behind us, he and Chloe hopping out of Brent’s truck as they opened the ambulance doors and pulled Noah’s stretcher onto the asphalt. Gentry helped me down and walked beside me, his hand on my back as we followed them into the hospital.

“I’m sorry, Amelia,” Chloe said as we burst through the trauma doors.

I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t see my own guilt in her eyes.

Doctors and nurses surrounded Noah, doing things I couldn’t even keep up with. The doctor continuously barked questions at us, asking how long he’d been diabetic, how low his sugar had gone, what he’d had for dinner last night, when his last finger stick was, if his CGM was functioning properly. I answered as quickly as I could, but still couldn’t avoid the impatient glances the doctor shot in my direction.

It seemed like forever before the activity slowed. The doctor came over and gestured for us to step into the hallway.

“His numbers are coming up, but they’re coming up slowly. We’d like to keep him on the glucose drip for a while longer, get him over a hundred, then we’ll restart the pump and keep an eye on him. I’d like to admit him, keep him overnight just to observe him.”

“But he’s going to be alright?” Gentry asked.

“As far as the blood sugar issue goes, yes. He’s already showing improvement. But he did suffer a seizure.” The doctor looked at me, perhaps recognizing in something on my face that I knew where he was going with his comments. “Seizures always present something of an unknown factor. We’ll have to wait until he wakes, until a neurologist can check him over, before we know if there will be any long-lasting effects.” The doctor patted Gentry on the shoulder. “It’s a waiting game now, I’m afraid.”

He walked off, leaving us shell-shocked in the middle of the hallway. I moved to go back into the room with Noah, but Gentry caught my arm, pulling me hard against his chest. For a long second, I allowed myself a moment of grief, a single sob slipping from between my lips. But my son was in a hospital bed, still unconscious. I didn’t have time to feel sorry for myself.

I pulled away and went back inside.

An hour passed. Then another. They moved Noah out of the emergency room and up to the pediatric floor, placing him in a room with Disney characters on the walls. It was too much like the summer he was diagnosed, down to the hospital gown that was much too big for him. Gentry stayed with me, pacing off and on, but mostly standing behind me, his hands on my shoulders. Chloe came to sit in the room for a while, but she couldn’t take the sight of Noah in that bed any better than I could.

“Why don’t you go back to the house and help Rebecca with my dad,” I suggested. She looked almost grateful when I did.

“My family’s here,” Gentry said close to my ear sometime mid-morning, gesturing toward the glass square in the door. “I should go get them up to speed on what’s going on.”

I looked up, glancing vaguely at Brent’s face in the window. “Okay.”

“I won’t be but a minute.”

He kissed the top of my head, his touch lingering. I reached up and touched the side of his face, then watched him go, pleased in a lukewarm sort of way to see Brent embrace him as he stepped through the door.

It must be nice to have family support.

I stood, my body so stiff and sore from all my adventures the night before that I couldn’t quite straighten up at first. I moved slowly, aware of places on the back of my thigh and my shoulders that were much sorer than they’d been the night before. I knew it would take time for it all the heal, but I found myself impatient with it at the moment. My kid was sick. I didn’t have time to be less than a hundred percent.

“Mommy?”

I spun around, wondering if my deep desire to hear Noah’s voice had caused me to hallucinate it. But, no, his eyes were open and he was watching me.

“Hey, baby!”

I crossed to the bed and kissed his forehead half a dozen times, tugging him up into my arms for a tight embrace.

“How are you? How do you feel?”

“I have a headache.”

I touched his temple, fear striking a chord deep in my chest. “What kind of headache?”

“I don’t know. Normal, I guess.” He looked around, frowning. “This is a baby room. Why am I in here?”

“You got sick during the night, baby. But you’re going to be okay now.”

“Can’t they put me in a big boy’s room?”

“I don’t know. We’ll have to ask.”

He sat back, glancing up at the television. “Can I watch cartoons?”

“You can watch anything you want.”

“And have some breakfast? I’m hungry.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. He was going to be alright; I didn’t need a neurologist to tell me so. Only a healthy boy could complain and ask for a favor all in the same breath.

A nurse came to sit with Noah as he ate the food they’d had brought up especially for him so that I could find Gentry and tell him the good news. I heard the Stones before I saw them, all four brothers, their significant others, and Remy and Bo, arguing and laughing in the family waiting room at the other end of the hall from the patient rooms. I stepped inside, a smile bright on my lips. But the smile faltered as I took in the scene that was unfolding in front of me.

When I said significant others, it wasn’t just Jack’s girlfriend, Brent’s fiancée, and Carson, Aiden’s girl. The pretty blond girl I’d only seen once before, briefly at that, was there, too.

Gentry’s fiancée.

She was clinging to his side, staring up into his face with an affection I wasn’t sure I could duplicate in a million years. She was speaking, her voice soft and low, speaking German in such a way that she almost made the guttural language beautiful. Gentry responded, his German fluent, but not as pretty as hers. Whatever he said made her blue eyes fill with tears. Gentry touched her face, saying something more that seemed to calm her.

There was so much affection there. From her to him, from him to her.

I was too tired to feel pain. It just made me sad.

“He’s awake,” I said, my voice dull. “It looks like he’s going to be okay.”

I turned around and stormed back up the hall—not really stormed. Strolled, maybe, because I was too hurt to be angry enough to storm—but Gentry caught my arm before I got far.

“Amelia, Iris is just—“

“That’s a pretty name. Iris.”

He frowned, tilting his head slightly. “Amelia—”

“I think you should go, Gentry. There’s just…it’s too much.”

“You don’t understand. Iris and I, it’s not what you think it is.”

“Does it matter?” Tears rolled down my cheeks. “Today is about Noah. And, right now, Noah needs me to pay attention. This…” I waved my hand around myself. “…this might not have happened if I’d been paying attention last night instead of letting myself get distracted. I can’t be distracted anymore, Gentry.”

“But you need to know the truth.”

I shook my head, too tired to come up with much more argument than that. Carson had followed him out of the family room. She moved up behind him now and touched his arm.

“Maybe it would be best if you go back, Gentry.” She focused on me. “I think you’ve pulled some of your stitches. I should take a look at them.”

I didn’t stop to answer. I just wanted to be with my kid.