Felix
I drive toward the hospital going ten over, hoping Ty doesn’t get carsick.
“Felix?” he asks.
“Yes?”
“Would you want to be my dad?”
I open my mouth and then close it again. That question is so loaded it might as well be a handgun. “Kid,” I say finally, “anyone who got to be your dad would be super lucky.”
“So will you be my dad?”
I glance at the cello case, as if he can see me. “Definitely not for four years.”
“But then?”
“Maybe then. It depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether your mom still likes me.” Which after this debacle I’m not thinking is likely.
“Do you think you’ll still like her?”
Maybe it’s the limerence, but I can’t imagine ever not wanting to be with Jenna. “Yes.”
“So when you’re my dad, will you make me a little brother?”
I run a yellow light. “Do you know how that works?”
“You have the sex to make the baby. Do you want to have the sex with my mom?”
Oh, god. I can’t exactly say no. “Yes, but I can’t.”
“Are you a dad?”
“No, I don’t have any kids.”
“So you’ve never had the sex.”
Now I give the cello a look I wouldn’t dare give Ty if he could see me. “It just—It doesn’t—” I take a deep breath. “It doesn’t always make babies. Just sometimes.”
“So your penis doesn’t work.”
“Ahhhh,” I say. “It works just fine, thank you very much.”
“So you can make me a brother.”
This kid. There is no dodging his questions, and I have to respect him for it. “Theoretically, I could make you a brother. I have the equipment, and it works.”
“What does theoremically mean?”
“Theoretically.” That’s another hard one. “So, like, theoretically you could throw a baseball through a window, right? But you wouldn’t.”
“So you could make me a brother, but—”
“But your mom probably wouldn’t want me to, and also it’s against the rules.” I desperately need to get him off this subject, even to something mostly adjacent. “You know parents don’t get to choose if they have a boy or a girl, right?”
Silence. “Really?”
“Yeah. You just get what you get.”
“But that’s not fair.”
“Yeah, kid,” I say. “Tell me about it.”
We reach the ER and I haul the case through the double doors as gently as I can. I walk up to the registration desk and put my case down in front of it. “There’s a kid stuck in this cello case.”
The nurse looks down at it. “Is he conscious?”
“Yes,” I say. “Say hi, Ty.”
“Hello!” Ty calls. “Felix took good care of me. He gave me juice and Cheetos. But I have to pee.”
The nurse gives me a withering look, no doubt weighing the quality of my parenting and finding me wanting. I don’t point out that I’m not his parent. This could only complicate things further.
She hands me a stack of paperwork. “Fill these out. We’ll call you back when we’re ready for you.”
I look down at the case. “But he’s stuck—”
“I heard you,” the nurse says. “Fill out the forms and we’ll call you back.”
The waiting room is crowded, and I see several people eyeing my now-battered cello case in confusion. I slide the case over to the nearest empty chair and sit down in it. “Hang on, kid,” I say. “We’re going to get you out of there.” I check my phone, but there’s no response from Jenna. I start to fill out the paperwork. “Ty, is your last name Rollins like your mom?”
“Yes,” he says.
“Do you know if you have insurance?”
“I think so.”
I check the appropriate boxes, though even if he’s right about having insurance, I’m certain he doesn’t know his insurance number. “What’s your address?”
“You know my address. You came to my house.”
He has a point. I pull out my phone again and copy it over from my text messages. “What about your phone number?”
“Didn’t you call my mom and talk to her for a long time?”
I freeze. “Were you listening to that?” Especially at the end, things had gotten pretty . . . intense.
“No,” he says. “But my mom was yawning this morning.”
Ha. Good. “All right. Yes, I also have your phone number.” But apparently not enough brain to remember that I do.
There’s a long list of things that might be wrong with Ty ranging from obesity to glaucoma. “Ty,” I say. “Do you have any health problems?”
“What are those?”
“Like, where you’re sick. Like asthma, or . . .” I look over the list. “Brain trauma.”
“My friend Declan has asthma.”
“That would be helpful if I were filling out a form for Declan. What about you?”
“Sometimes I get colds. Or throw up. One time, I threw up in my mom’s purse.”
I bet Jenna loved that. “Great. No health problems. Are you allergic to any medication?” I stare at the form. “You don’t need medication. You are in a cello case.” I walk back to the registration desk and slap the papers down on the table. “There. Can we please get the kid out of the case now?”
“We’ll call you back when—”
“When you’re ready,” I say. “Right.”
I stalk back to the case and sit beside Ty with my head in my hands. I have a text message on my phone: On our way!
Jenna is definitely going to kill me.
We’re waiting now, I respond.
Jenna doesn’t answer.
It takes another fifteen minutes for the nurse to take us back. Ty amuses himself by regaling me with the similarities and differences of being inside a cello case and driving in a pope mobile. The nurse brings out a stretcher, onto which we load Ty, case and all. Twenty minutes later, the doctor is cutting Ty out of the case with a cast saw, and Jenna comes into the room.
She doesn’t even look at me.
“Ty!” she says, as the doctor lifts the top of the case away.
Ty pops up, his hair sticky with juice and orange Cheeto dust. “Hi, Mom!”
I sit there in agony as Jenna lifts Ty out of the cello case and looks him over. Fragments of Cheeto fall to the floor.
“Jenna,” I say. “I am so sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen, I swear.”
I’m ready—as ready as I’ll ever be—for her to glare at me. To yell at me, even, for endangering her kid like this. But instead Jenna laughs, and dusts off Ty’s shoulders. “I guess I should have told you about his affection for small spaces.”
I stare at her. “He’s done this before?”
“Oh, yes,” Jenna says. “One time he got his arm stuck between a restaurant booth and the wall. They had to cover him in butter while I sat on the floor feeding him chicken fingers. Once at a movie, he decided to slide down the back of his seat, and it took a guy the size of the Hulk to pry the seat apart. And once my mom took him to the art museum, and he got his head stuck behind a statue. They had to remove it to get him out. We may have inspired them to put up signs and gently suggest we don’t come back.”
Huh. No wonder he wasn’t scared—or even surprised—when he got stuck.
Ty grins like these are his proudest accomplishments, and Jenna hugs him. Orange dust sticks to the dark sequins of her dress. She cringes at me. “Sorry. He hasn’t done this in a while or I would have warned you. I’ll pay for your cello case.”
I shake my head, shell-shocked with relief. “No, I’m sorry. Don’t worry about the case. I have another one. And I should have been paying more attention.”
“You were paying attention,” Ty says. “You were getting me a snack.”
Jenna runs her hand through his sticky hair. “I can see that.”
I grimace. “He was hungry . . .”
“And now I need to pee so much,” Ty says.
“All right,” Jenna says. “Let’s get you to the bathroom, and then I need to give them our insurance information and we’ll get you home.”
“When can Felix watch me again?” Ty asks.
“I’m pretty sure your mom isn’t going to want me to watch you again.”
“That’s not the case,” Jenna says. She gives Ty a look that tries to be stern, though her lips are quirking up at the edges. “But I’d understand if Felix didn’t want to be responsible for you after this.”
“Why not?” Ty asks. “We had fun, didn’t we Felix? And I need your help on my secret project.”
“Yeah,” I say. “We sure did. And I’d be happy to help you if your mom’s okay with it.” I look at Jenna. “I really am sorry.”
Jenna smiles, and her hand half reaches toward me before it drops to her side. “Really. It’s okay. But I’d better get this boy to a bathroom, and Alec’s waiting outside. I’ll call you after I get Ty to bed.”
“Yes, please,” I say.
Jenna ushers Ty off, leaving me alone with the remains of my cello case.
And I try not to desperately wish I was the one taking them home.