“She’s eight, Laur.”
“She’s eight years old.”
“So is Poppy!”
It came out as a scream.
I didn’t mean it to.
Upstairs, the floor creaked.
We both went silent.
We waited.
Nothing.
She’d only rolled over.
I lowered my voice.
“So is Poppy,” I said.
“And she sat at that window for three hours on her birthday.”
“Waiting for your car.”
“Where were you, Nate?”
He didn’t answer.
“Where were you on June fourteenth?”
He put his face in his hands.
“Nate.”
“Four West,” he said into his palms.
“Maddie’s fourth surgery was that morning.”
“It went long.”
“She woke up screaming.”
“Rachel was at work.”
“She couldn’t get off.”
“Maddie kept asking for me.”
“And you stayed.”
“I stayed.”
“Through our daughter’s birthday.”
He lifted his head.
“Laur, it was her birthday too.”
I stopped breathing.
“What?”
“Maddie’s birthday.”
“June fourteenth.”
“Same day as Poppy’s.”
“She turned eight in a hospital bed with tubes in her arms.”
“With a cupcake from the cafeteria.”
“And her mom stuck at a diner, pouring coffee.”
“She asked me to stay until she fell asleep.”
“She said I was her lucky doctor.”
“I’m the reason she was in that bed.”
“How was I supposed to walk out?”
I sat down across from him.
I didn’t have anything left to stand on.
“You could have called me,” I said.
“You could have said, Laur, there’s a little girl who needs me.”
“I would have brought Poppy’s cake to that hospital.”
“I would have brought balloons.”
“I would have made it a party for both of them.”
He stared at me.
“You would have,” he said slowly.
“You really would have.”
“Of course I would have.”
“You never let me,” I said.
“That’s the whole thing, Nate.”
“You never once let me carry any of it.”
He started crying then.
Not the quiet kind.
The kind he’d been holding in since November.
I let him.
I didn’t touch him.
But I didn’t leave, either.
When he could breathe again, I told him about Owen’s garage.
He went very still.
“You went to Owen’s?”
“I went to Owen’s.”
