“It’s okay, sweetie pie. It won’t be long now. Try to be patient.”
Claire McFarland reached out and patted Dougie on the leg reassuringly. He was sound asleep, leaned up against the passenger side door. And that was the good news. She knew she’d be up all night with him, rocking him and singing to him while he whimpered in pain from that snake bite.
Dougie’s arm is as big around as a gallon milk jug, sticking straight out from his body, black and purple, his hand bigger than a catcher’s mitt with puncture wounds …
Claire yanked the steering wheel and the car pulled back onto the asphalt from the shoulder where it had drifted when the awful image blinded her and she couldn’t see the road.
The image was gone now, though, and Dougie was again asleep against the car door. And there was a shimmering halo of light around him, like she saw when she tiptoed into his room at night to watch him sleep, which she did every night, making sure he was sound asleep because he didn’t like it when he woke up and found her standing by his bedside. Just a boy, a little boy being grumpy with his mommy. A perfect little boy. He always was. Perfect. Absolutely perfect.
He was the most beautiful baby she had ever seen. Oh, she knew all mothers thought their infants were beautiful but Dougie really was. Everyone could see it. The people at the window in the hospital nursery there to look at other babies — they always ended up staring at Dougie. They couldn’t help gawking at the adorable bundle of chubby infant in the last bassinet on the left. He had a whole head of hair. A full head, she could comb it, black hair that lay like feathers on his forehead with a perfect face beneath it. Why, she’d stand at the nursery window and after a while everybody crowded around her, they always did, all the other parents and family members, elbowing her out of the way so they could catch a glimpse of the perfect baby lying there, his hair brushed to the side, with a smile on his face. Her baby was always smiling, even in his sleep, and his smile planted dimples in his cheeks so deep you could eat pudding out of them.
“Mrs. Taylor … calm down. There’s nothing wrong with your baby. Almost all babies are born with their heads misshapen. It happens when they come down the birth canal, that’s why the bones in a baby’s skull are not solid yet. In a few months, he’ll look perfectly normal. His head won’t be pointed, the back of his skull won’t be flat anymore. And if his facial features are still smashed in — they won’t be, but if they are — you’ll need to consult a plastic surgeon.”
The voices of memory were replaced by a gentle buzzing in Claire’s head, like a swarm of bees disturbed on its hive, and it seemed to fill her whole head so she had trouble concentrating. The buzzing was sound but the sound had substance, too, like a curtain. It hung in her mind and she couldn’t see through it, couldn’t see what lay behind it and that was a good thing because she didn’t need to see it. It would only upset her to see what was back there in the dark, lurking in the dark, and she needed to stay calm. When she got upset, it upset Dougie.
It had always been like that, from the moment when she held her baby in her arms nursing him, her body nourishing the body of her child, it was at that instant they were bonded together closer than any mother and her son had ever been.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Taylor, but you have inverted nipples, making it hard for your baby to latch on and suck. You can keep trying, but clearly your baby is not getting sufficient nourishment. He’ll do just fine on formula …”
Bat wings fluttered in her head, beating behind her eyes, and she reached over and tenderly touched the sleeping child leaned against the door. Her baby. Her son. A strong, healthy boy who looked like he belonged on television commercials, advertising athletic shoes or breakfast cereal.
“The inhaler will open up his airways so he can breathe, but his asthma is severe …”
A born leader, all his teachers said so. A brilliant student, but well-rounded. Not some bookworm who spent all his time studying, Dougie enjoyed sports and music, sang in the choir, played the trumpet in the band.
“… sorry Mrs. Taylor, but he doesn’t have the breath support to sing, or play an instrument. And have you thought about tutoring in math and science? We have an after-school program …”
The buzzing in her head kicked up a notch in volume, drowning out the voices, the images, granting her peace in which she could concentrate on what she had to do because everything in her world, everything that mattered — Dougie! — was depending on her. She glanced over at him, encased in a shimmering golden glow. Like an angel. Yes, that was it. Her Dougie was a true angel, a perfect being who depended on his mother to look after him and she would not, would never, let him down.
“Mommy’s got this, sugar, so you just sleep on. Mommy’s going to make everything all better.”
It was so simple, she was surprised she hadn’t figured it out sooner. Wished she had because she could have saved Dougie that miserable time at that place, that horrible place, could have saved herself all that worry. Not that she begrudged precious Dougie one second of the time she’d spent upset. Or the time she would have to spend tonight, rocking him, singing to him, giving him baby aspirin crushed up and put in orange juice in his sippy cup. But if she’d realized sooner what she had to do to heal her baby, she’d never have let them take him to that awful place, put her baby in a drawer! She’d have wrapped him up warm in a blanket and grabbed that Sheridan boy, the useless excuse for a human, and hauled him off to make it right.
As soon as she made that monstrous creature give back to Dougie the perfection he’d stolen, she would lay down the law. Douglas Taylor would never again be allowed to play with Rusty Sheridan. A kid like that didn’t deserve a true, loyal boy like Dougie for a friend.
The sun sparkled off the metal of the sign in the morning sunshine. “Beaufort County 2 miles.”