As I’d gotten a ride over to the police station, I had to ride back to the hospital with Jill and Daniel. Out in the parking lot, they piled into her car, and I stood around looking stupid and lost. “Oh just get in,” said Jill, annoyed but apparently willing to share a car ride with me. I wondered at how I’d been released so quickly with no lawyer, no paperwork, no phone call even, and Daniel guessed I wasn’t really under arrest but just in for questioning. He allowed as how if I became more unemployed and more depressed, I too could watch three episodes of Law & Order, sometimes four, a day, and then I would be clear on such distinctions. He was being cute. As if our, all our, lives didn’t hang by spider thread. As if our, all our, son didn’t suffer from no-one-knew-what in the ER without us. As if they hadn’t just had me arrested—or brought in for questioning—for poisoning and/or kidnapping their, my, our baby boy.
At the hospital, Jason was waiting, head in his hands, more or less where I’d left him except he’d called in reinforcements. Lucas was there. And Ethan. They all three stood up as soon as we walked in.
“They know something, but they won’t tell us,” Jason blurted.
“Are you okay?” Ethan asked. Me. Ethan asked me.
I avoided eye contact and gave him a half nod and said a firm and unequivocal no to the screaming that threatened to come and come and never stop.
Lucas went over to the nurses’ station calmly. Then he came back to us. Then we waited. Jason wanted to ask what happened, what happened after I was arrested by the police, after Jill produced a father and a birth certificate, after she screamed stolen baby in the ER waiting room. But even Jason couldn’t think of a way to bring this up in polite conversation. Finally, a doctor came over. He clearly had been briefed because he looked from one to the other to the other of us and said, “Why don’t we find a room where we can all talk.”
We all followed him down the hall to the same empty room where I’d waited before. He closed the door behind him and took a deep breath.
“Atlas has bacterial meningitis.” I registered at first only that he hadn’t said cancer, willed my ears open, my attention focused . . .
“. . . very smart, very lucky you brought him in when you did. It’s treatable but it’s a very, very serious disease, and children die from it . . .”
Very smart and very lucky. Very lucky. Very lucky . . .
“. . . intravenous antibiotics for a few days and IV fluids because of the vomiting and diarrhea. It’s very contagious, so we’ll prescribe anyone who’s been in close contact with him in the last few days a course of rifampin to be on the safe side. There’s a good chance he’ll recover completely though he’ll be quite weak for a while yet—”
“A good chance?” I interrupted.
“Sometimes children suffer long-term side effects—heart problems, brain damage, deafness. You can’t worry about that right now because we won’t know any time soon. We’re doing the best we can for him right now.”
“Can we see him?” I asked.
“Not tonight. Come back tomorrow and—”
“But if he needs his mother—” Jill began.
“Not tonight,” the doctor said firmly. “Tomorrow you can sort all this out.”
Sort all this out. He didn’t mean the meningitis, about which everything there was to be done was already being done. He meant us, this family, who was his mother and who wasn’t, who got to see him and who didn’t, who was blameless and who was at fault. For a while, no one said anything. Then Jill said, “I’m staying with Dan tonight,” and, nodding in my direction, “Someone else drive her home.” She turned and walked out, Daniel on her heels.
“I’ll take you home,” said Jason and Ethan together.
“My car is here actually. I just needed a ride back to the hospital after she had me arrested.”
“Drink?” Lucas concluded.
“Thanks, I just want to go home.”
“Maybe leave your car here anyway,” said Ethan. “I’ll drive you home and pick you up and bring you back here first thing in the morning before class. We could stop on the way home and get something to eat.”
“I should go home.”
“Gonna be awfully quiet at home. No one there but you.”
This had not occurred to me. I accepted the ride, tabled the rest, grateful to put at least something in someone else’s hands. Said goodbye to Jason and Lucas. Jason hugged me and said it wasn’t my fault. I hugged him and thanked him for being so smart and lucky.
“If you had waited . . .” I said.
“Don’t even think it,” he said.
In Ethan’s car, he didn’t even get the ignition switched on before I was sobbing in the passenger seat, panicked heaving soaking the front of my shirt hands in fists over my eyes gasping for air rocking back and forth shaking like to break apart sobbing. Ethan got out of the car, came around to my side, opened the door, crouched down on the ground in front of me, and pulled me into his arms. We stayed like that till I was done, me leaning out of the passenger seat, folded in half, trembling and soaked, Ethan reaching up, crouching down, air and ground, sky and earth, all directions at once, his hands in my hair, on my neck, his whispers, indiscernible, in my ear. Finally, I was all out.
“I don’t think I can go out to dinner,” I said.
“Let’s eat at your place.”
“I don’t think I’m up to cooking.”
“I’ll cook.”
“You’ll cook?”
“Other people besides you can cook. I manage to feed myself nearly every day actually. Sometimes you have to let someone else make dinner,” he said. And then, “Janey, it’s going to be okay.” I didn’t believe him, but it was sweet of him to say so.
When we got in, the light on the machine was blinking.
Katie.
“Hey, it’s me. Couldn’t get you on your cell, but I wanted to check in, let you know we got here okay. Tried about fifty billion hors d’oeuvres. More tomorrow. It’s pretty crazy. We’re having a great time though. I also wanted to mention that Atlas had some diarrhea late last night and this morning. He seemed fine otherwise. I’m sure it’s nothing. Just wanted to make sure everything’s cool there. Oh well. See you tomorrow. Call me. Bye.”