“What if the doctors did, too?” Charlotte argued. “What if Piper made a mistake?”
“Then she made a mistake!” I shrugged. “Would it have changed the outcome? If you’d known about all the breaks, all the trips to the ER, all we’d have to do for Willow, would you have wanted her any less?”
She opened her mouth, and then resolutely clamped it shut.
That scared the hell out of me.
“So what if she winds up in a lot of casts?” I said, reaching for Charlotte’s hand. “She also knows the name of every bone in the freaking body and she hates the color yellow and she told me last night she wants to be a beekeeper when she grows up. She’s our little girl, Char lotte. We don’t need help. We’ve handled this for five years; we’ll keep handling it ourselves.”
Charlotte drew away from me. “Where’s the we, Sean? You go off to work. You go out with the guys for poker night. You make it sound like you’re with Willow twenty-four/seven, but you have no idea what that’s like.”
“Then we’ll get a visiting nurse. An aide…”
“And we’ll pay her with what?” Charlotte snapped. “Come to think of it, how are we going to afford a new car big enough to carry Willow’s chair and walker and crutches, since ours is going on two hundred thousand miles? How are we going to pay off her surgeries, the parts insurance won’t cover? How are we going to make sure her house has a handicapped ramp and a kitchen sink low enough for a wheelchair?”
“Are you saying I can’t provide for my own kid?” I said, my voice escalating.
Suddenly, all the bluster went out of Charlotte. “Oh, Sean. You’re the best father. But…you’re not a mother.”
There was a shriek, and-instinct kicking in-both Charlotte and I sprinted across the parking lot, expecting to find Willow twisted on the pavement with a bone breaking through her skin. Instead, Amelia was holding the crying baby at arm’s length, a stain streaking the front of her shirt. “It barfed on me!” she wailed.
The baby’s mother came hurrying out of the church. “I’m so sorry,” she said, to us, to Amelia, as Willow sat on the ground, laughing at her sister’s bad luck. “I think he might be coming down with something…”
Charlotte stepped forward and took the baby from Amelia. “Maybe a virus,” she said. “Don’t worry. These things happen.”
She stood back as the woman gave a wad of Baby Wipes to Amelia to clean herself off. “This conversation is over,” I murmured to Charlotte. “Period.”
Charlotte bounced the baby in her arms. “Sure, Sean,” she said, too easily. “Whatever you say.”
By six o’clock that night, Charlotte had caught whatever the baby had, and was sick as a dog. Vomiting like crazy, she’d sequestered herself in the bathroom. I was supposed to work the night shift, but it was blatantly clear that wasn’t going to happen. “Amelia needs help with her science homework,” Charlotte murmured, patting her face with a damp towel. “And the girls need dinner…”
“I’ll take care of it,” I said. “What else do you need?”
“To die?” Charlotte moaned, and she shoved me out of the way to kneel in front of the toilet again.
I backed out of the bathroom, closing the door behind me. Downstairs, you were sitting on the living room couch eating a banana. “You’re gonna spoil your appetite,” I said.
“I’m not eating it, Daddy. I’m fixing it.”
“Fixing it,” I repeated. On the table in front of you was a knife, which you weren’t supposed to have-I made a mental note to yell at Amelia for getting you one. There was a slice down the center of the banana.
You popped open the lid of a mending kit we’d taken from the hotel room in Florida, pulled out a prethreaded needle, and started to sew up the wound in the banana skin.
“Willow,” I said. “What are you doing?”
You blinked up at me. “Surgery.”
I watched you for a few stitches, to make sure you didn’t poke yourself with the needle, and then shrugged. Far be it from me to stand in the way of science.
In the kitchen, Amelia was sprawled across the table with markers, glue, and a piece of poster board. “You want to tell me why Willow’s out there with a paring knife?” I said.
“Because she asked for one.”
“If she asked for a chain saw, would you have gotten it out of the garage?”
“Well, that would kind of be overkill for cutting up a banana, don’t you think?” Looking down at her project, Amelia sighed. “This totally sucks. I have to make a board game about the digestive system, and everyone’s going to make fun of me because we all know where the digestive system ends.”
“Funny you should use that word,” I said.
“G-R-O-double-S, Dad.”
I started pulling pots and pans out from beneath the counter and set out a frying pan. “What do you say to pancakes for dinner?” Not that they had a choice; it was the only thing I knew how to cook, except for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
“Mom made pancakes for breakfast,” Amelia complained.
“Did you know that dissolvable stitches are made out of animal guts?” you called out.
“No, and now I kind of wish I didn’t…”
Amelia rubbed a glue stick over her poster board. “Is Mom better yet?”
“No, baby.”
“But she promised me she’d help draw the esophagus.”
“I can help,” I said.
“You can’t draw, Dad. When we play Pictionary you always make a house, even when that has nothing to do with the answer.”
“Well, how hard can an esophagus be? It’s a tube, right?” I rummaged for a box of Bisquick.
There was a thump; the knife had rolled under the couch. You were twisting uncomfortably. “Hang on, Wills, I can get that for you,” I called.
“I don’t need it anymore,” you said, but you hadn’t stopped squirming.
Amelia sighed. “Willow, stop being such a baby before you pee in your pants.”
I looked from your sister to you. “Do you have to go to the bathroom?”
“She’s making that face she makes when she’s trying to hold it in-”
“Amelia, enough.” I walked into the living room and crouched down beside you. “Honey, you don’t have to be embarrassed.”
You flattened your lips together. “I want Mom to take me.”
“Mom’s not here,” Amelia snapped.
I hoisted you off the couch to carry you into the downstairs bathroom. I’d just wrangled your awkwardly cast legs into the doorframe when you said, “You forgot the garbage bags.”
Charlotte had told me how she’d line them inside your cast before you went to the bathroom. In all the time you’d been in your spica, I hadn’t been pressed into duty for this-you were wildly self-conscious about having me pull down your pants. I reached around the doorframe to the dryer, where Charlotte had stashed a box of kitchen trash bags. “Okay,” I said. “I’m a novice, so you have to tell me what to do.”
“You have to swear you won’t peek,” you said.
“Cross my heart.”
You untied the knot that was holding up the gigantic boxer shorts we’d pulled over your spica, and I lifted you up so that they would pool at your hips. As I pulled them off, you squealed. “Look up here!”
“Right.” I resolutely fixed my eyes on yours, trying to maneuver the shorts off you without seeing what I was doing. Then I held up the garbage bag, which would have to be tucked in along the crotch line. “You want to do this part?” I asked, blushing.
I held you under the armpits while you struggled to line the cast with the plastic. “Ready,” you said, and I positioned you over the toilet.
“No, back more,” you said, and I adjusted you and waited.