He sits rocking beside the hospital bed with his pocket full of bubble gum cigars. One real one, for Rudy, wedged in with all these pink and blue Double Bubbles. Because, you know, who knows? No matter what Marnie said.
He holds his temples, squeezing, trying to remember. Acronyms, of course. Everything here is. But it was two words. He knows that. Or maybe three. He just can’t bring them up out of that sudden rush and flurry. Holding the baby, grinning so wide, Marn’s panting, after that last great push, not easing, but getting harder, her eyes going wide, trying to get out his name through the gasping. “Taz? Taz? Taz?” All question. He’d held the baby up, for her to see, still not catching on. He stood to set it on her chest, but the doctor and the nurse were already scrambling, others rushing into the room. Someone, he can’t even say who, or how, took the baby, and Marn clutched his emptied hand like it was the last thing holding her to the planet.
Cardio. But that wasn’t it. Pulmonary. Maybe.
Pulmonary, pulmonary. He runs through his medical vocabulary, the few TV shows they’d watched, before the TV gave out. Hematoma. Contusion. Embo—
Pulmonary embolism. PE.
Still rocking, head clutched in his hands, he whispers it again and again, wondering what it is.
Balloons tremble around him every time the AC kicks in, and someone finally reaches into the room and switches off the glaring lights, Rudy’s gigantic stuffed bear looking bewildered in the gloaming.