“Bram?” Ava says softly and I look to her, her eyes wide with wonderment. “Bram?” she repeats louder.
“Hey, little one,” he says, grinning at her and she immediately stands up in her seat, flapping her arms up and down. It would be the cutest thing I have ever seen, if it weren’t for the circumstances. I may have just said that I was still in love with Bram, but that didn’t mean I wanted to see him. It didn’t mean that it would change the past. You can love someone and not do anything about it.
But Ava doesn’t care. She runs to the end of the booth and practically throws herself at him. He envelopes her into a big hug, picking her up off the ground and I’m torn between being angry and wanting to break down and cry. There are too many big things inside me, vying for me to make a choice, to pay them all attention and in the end I’m just a giant mess.
Bram carefully places her back on the ground but Ava keeps jumping around, going crazy. She’s smiling so big, her eyes are so wide, her breath so sharp and shallow.
Her breath shouldn’t be like that.
While Bram is now staring at me, I’m staring at Ava in concern, watching her carefully, trying to listen.
“Bram-a-lama…” she starts to sing but she stops and tries to take a deep breath. Her face is going white before my eyes and she rocks on her feet back and forth.
“Oh, shit,” I cry out, getting out of the booth just as she tips toward the ground. Bram is there, catching her in time and I fall down to my knees beside her as he holds her up.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
I grab her hand and squeeze it. It’s clammy. Her eyes are unfocused, glazed, and that familiar fruit odor permeates from her breath.
“Oh, fuck, no not now,” I say as she starts to lose consciousness right there in front of me. “Ava!” I yell at her and her eyes briefly flutter open before closing.
Bram gingerly lowers her to the ground while I crawl over her, tapping on her face. He brings out his phone. “I’m calling the ambulance.” I hear him place the call and I’m not about to argue over this one.
“I think it’s DKA. Diabetic shock.”
“That same thing she had before?” he asks, voice high.
I nod and then he relays the information to the agent. Ava’s been great lately, so good. The diet, the readings, everything has been working out well. But the last time she got like this was when Bram left and now that he’s here, the emotions are just too much.
“I think it can be brought on by stress and emotional upheaval,” I tell him without looking at him. I’m trying my hardest to keep her awake and keep myself calm. I’ve learned a lot. I can do this. I can get her through this.
But I can’t do it alone right now. I finally meet Bram’s eyes and see that he looks on the verge of breaking himself. “I need you to get my bag, the large purple one in the booth, and bring it here,” I tell him.
He nods and swiftly does as I ask. Now people are gathered around us and James is asking if I need anything and I don’t know what to say, I just know what to do. I inject her with the insulin, right into her stomach and she doesn’t even flinch.
“That will work, right?” he asks me.
“I hope so,” I tell him, not wanting to think about what would happen if it didn’t. The last time, she didn’t lose consciousness she didn’t have that fruit breath. Last time the shot brought her around but this time…this time I’m so afraid it won’t.
Thankfully it’s not long before the ambulance roars up to the doors, even though to me it felt like hours, and they get Ava on a stretcher and into the ambulance. The EMTs are asking me questions and I’m rattling off everything about her disease and our routine, like it’s textbook formula.
But when I try to make my way into the back of the ambulance, they tell me I can’t be there with her. It’s then that I break down, that I lose it. That I scream and I cry, while they tell me it’s their policy not to when the sirens are going.
Bram holds me back, his hands on both my arms, keeping me from lashing out at them in anger. I feel crazed and feral, the worry and panic and unfairness of it all ripping me at the seams. Finally, the ambulance pulls away and I feel like all my hope goes with it.
I lean into Bram and try to catch my breath, to gain back my control. I wish he wasn’t the one holding me and at the same time I’m glad he’s here.
The only person who really seemed to care about the both of us so much.
You were a charity case, a wicked voice says to me inside my head and I ignore it because what had happened between us has no bearing now, not while my baby girl is on the verge of dying. Nothing else matters anymore.
Bram puts me in his car and then we speed off after the ambulance and to the hospital, the same one as last time. With any luck, I’ll have the same doctor and that thought, this little bit of familiarity, brings me a tiny shred of calm.
This time there is no waiting in the emergency room. Bram and I are ushered down the hall toward the room Ava is in, and when a nurse asks if we are her parents, I feel myself nodding. Bram seemed ready to leave but the truth is too sticky to explain and at this moment I need someone like him here to hold my own hand when I need to be holding Ava’s.
It’s the same doctor as before but the news isn’t the same. He says her insulin levels are so off the charts that it’s becoming difficult to keep them where they need to be. His words dig deep and now I’m really afraid there won’t be a happy ending. There will be no out. It will be one of those ironic ones, the type in a film noir where the mother loses the daughter but gains a husband. But the loss she feels is one that can never, ever, ever be replaced.
The doctor wants privacy and has brought in someone else, so Bram and I wait out in the hall, stuck in uncomfortable chairs and I’m rocking in it back and forth, my brain wanting to latch onto the horrid impossible. I keep imagining what it would feel like if they came out with bad news and it’s akin to free-falling into Hell. It’s so brutal and unbearable that I get dizzy even thinking about it.
Bram rubs my back as I curl up into a ball and try to breathe and stay in the moment and stop panicking. It’s so damn hard. But his presence, his comfort, is relentless.
And all this time, he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t apologize, he doesn’t try to win me over – he doesn’t even tell me that everything’s going to be all right. Because he knows, as much as I do, that it’s not all right. She’s in there and it’s not all right and no amount of saying it is ever going to make it true.
All Bram does is be there. It’s simple.
He’s just there.
And it’s all I will need to get through.
I just hope that Ava, wherever she is in her head, her mind locked down by her betraying body, can feel him too.
***
“Nicola.” Bram’s voice breaks through the haze. “I got you a coffee.”
I open my eyes and see him holding out a chipped Styrofoam cup filled with inky brown liquid.
“It tastes like bloody petrol,” he says apologetically. “But it will help.”
I straighten up in my seat and gingerly take it from him, shooting him a quick smile of thanks. I look over at Ava who is lying in the hospital bed, IVs everywhere and eyes closed. She looks more angelic than ever.
“How is she?”
He sits down next to me with a tired sigh. “She hasn’t woken up. I think she had a funny dream because she was smiling at one point. The nurses say it’s best to let her sleep. Her little system has undergone so much.”
That it has. It was about 1am when the doctors were finally able to pull Ava out of her quasi-coma. She wasn’t entirely with it at the time, but she recognized me and Bram and thank God she was too doped up she couldn’t get emotional over him again.
After that, I pretty much stood vigil at her side, making up stories and telling them to her as she slept. Finally, I must have fallen asleep in the chair, utterly exhausted.