IN ADDITION TO not calling Tori like I should have, evidently I was supposed to call Gavin’s pediatrician as well before showing up at the ER, which the receptionist condescendingly informed me. Why don’t I know any of this? I listened to everything. I’ve been to every appointment, and yet, I feel like the dumbest parent in existence. Now we’re sitting here in a goddamn waiting room while my son burns up in my arms. Shouldn’t kids have priority in an ER?
Hunter places his hand on my shoulder and reaches over with a cup of coffee for me in his other hand. The coffee smells good, and while I appreciate the gesture, the caffeine is just going to stir me up more than I already am right now. “Did you call you Tori yet?” he asks.
I shake my head, realizing it’s been over an hour, and I have no excuse for not calling her by this point. “No,” I say, looking down at Gavin who’s unworried, unfazed, and asleep in my arms.
“Oh, you probably should let her know,” Hunter says, sitting down beside me. “I don’t want to pry, but—”
“You’re not,” I tell him.
“You’ve changed, AJ.” His words aren’t meant to be offensive. It’s a factual statement. “And I’m worried about you.” I’m worried about me too. “You don’t laugh, you don’t smile, and you aren’t…you.”
“Yeah,” I agree. I can’t disagree, because he’s right.
“Are you okay?” he asks with hesitation.
Wanting to blurt out my answer, I let his question stir around in my head for a minute. I’m not sure I know what the definition of okay is. I guess if I was okay I would feel happy, and I would smile and laugh like I used to, but since I don’t, I guess there’s only one answer to his question. “No. I’m not.”
“I know,” he says. “Can I help you?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t know if anyone can.”
“Gavin,” a nurse calls from one of the open doors.
“I’ll wait here,” Hunter says. Part of me feels like a child, and I want him to come with me. I hate hospitals. I know he hates them more, though, and with good reason.
I bring Gavin in through the door, following the heavy-set nurse who’s draped in smiling puppy dog scrubs. As we enter the triage area, she pulls the curtain closed around us. “If you could remove his clothes except for his diaper, we’re going to weigh him, check his temperature, and his oxygen levels. You mentioned at the front desk that he has a fever?”
“Yes. It was at a hundred-and-three.” With shaking hands, I remove the outer layer of Gavin’s clothes, then quickly move on to the buttoned onesie.
“Have you given him Advil or any type of fever reducer in the past six hours?”
“No, nothing. We came right here.” I look at her face, waiting for the judgmental “you did something wrong” look but there’s no look. She places a piece of paper down onto a scale and gestures for me to put Gavin down on it. The coldness must be seeping through the thin paper lining the scale because his eyes pop open, but only partially. With him looking at me now, I can see something isn’t right. He looks sick.
She quickly weighs him and asks me to lift him back up. I wrap my arms around him tightly to keep him warm, knowing he must feel cold without clothes and the fever on top of it all. The nurse places the thermometer under his arm and we both wait in silence for the beep.
In the same moment the beep goes off, my phone buzzes in my pocket, just like it’s been doing for an hour now, but I’ve ignored it. “Goodness,” the nurse says calmly. “A hundred-three-point-eight.”
“So what does that mean? What do we do? Is he going to be okay?”
“A doctor will be in to see him shortly, and we’ll go from there.” I was hoping for some reassurance, but she certainly didn’t offer any.
The nurse leaves us alone in this curtain-covered, makeshift room where I hear a million different conversations and noises coming from various parts of the large area we’re all jammed inside of. I know how emergency rooms are. We’ll probably be waiting here an hour before a doctor will see us, which scares me considering Gavin’s fever is still rising. I settle down into the spare guest chair, still holding Gavin tightly within my arms. He’s looking at me like I have two heads, probably wondering what’s going on and why he feels like total crap. Why didn’t they give him some Tylenol or Motrin? I wonder if I should request some. At the same time, Hunter’s questions begin to replay in my head. If I don’t let Tori know what’s going on right now, I may never live this down. Sliding my phone out of my pocket, I look down at the screen, finding a few missed calls and text messages from her. The latest text message reads:
Tori: AJ, are you kidding me? I just had to call Hunter to see where you were. Were you going to tell me our son was at the hospital? I’m on my way.
Hunter probably thinks I’m going to kill him now, but I wouldn’t ask him to lie for me. I wasn’t planning to lie to her, I just...have about as much as I can handle going on right now, and drama isn’t going to help.
Rather than reply to her text, I dial her number and place the phone up to my ear. I’m unsure if the call had even connected yet when Tori answers. “AJ, why didn’t you call me?”