Page 99 of In a Word, Yes

No. The first missed call came in at 11:19 a.m. from the youth ranch, followed by two from Nina, one from Dad, then two more from Nina.

Everything is not okay.

It’s all blurring together—the phone screen, my tumbling thoughts. Ignoring the voicemails, not to mention the pile of text notifications, I zero in on Nina’s name and tap. “Pick up, pick up, pick up.”

A hand on my back, steadying me. Wyatt’s.

“Something’s very wrong.”

Thirty-Eight

collywobbles(n.): intense anxiety, especially with queasiness

What is taking so long? I brush Chase’s mop of hair off his forehead, desperate for the doctor to return with the result of his scan. Chase winces in his sleep. Does he need more drugs? I can’t have my son in pain like this.

Especially when it’s my fault.

As I imagine the writhing abdominal pain I’m told Chase endured for hours, the pit in my own stomach grows bigger, hotter. It sears. To think, while I was sloshing around a bucolic lake andcanoodling with a man, my child lay in agony on a cot in some office while ranch staff attempted (and failed!) to reach me.

A text comes in. Wyatt again. I pocket my phone without responding.

I’ll forever be grateful for the way he took action without asking questions, wordlessly flinging his pack in the truck bed and starting the motor while I frantically waited for Nina to answermy call. Vaguely I recall him reaching over to fasten my seat belt as we blasted down the mountain in a cloud of volcanic dust.

But now it’s shame, not dust, billowing around me.

Chase deserves a mother who will put his needs first every time, not some self-centered flirt trying to resurrect her schoolgirl days, entertaining a crush. I’m done with it. Done with all the moony-eyed, adolescent dreaming about where my life might lead, and whose loving arms I might fall into every night.

That woman no longer exists.

I memorize Chase’s freckles. Drink in the curve of his mouth. How much longer will his cheeks hold this baby fat? By hell and by high water, my story led me here, to this beautiful young man before me. And it is enough.

Oh, God! Make Chase okay, and I promise I will cherish him and treasure every moment you give us. Let him go back to being my beloved alien planet,and me to being his sun.

Nina offered to stay, of course, when at last we arrived at the hospital. But I couldn’t have her shelling out money she didn’t have on a babysitter. “You go on,” I insisted. “I’ll be fine.”

I wasn’t fine, and we both knew it. But I needed to be not fine alone.

I insisted Wyatt leave as well, as he’s on duty at the station tonight. I couldn’t worry about other people, couldn’t handle seeing the concern in their eyes. Not now. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t pray.

I just need my son to be okay.

I watch Chase sleep the deepest sleep of his lifetime and whisper over him, “Oh, sweetheart.”

A screeching sound startles me. The curtain surrounding Chase’s hospital bed being yanked open. The doctor enters, carrying a clipboard and speaking at full volume. Chase doesn’t so much as twitch.

“We’re still waiting on the radiologist’s report,” he says. “But toxicology looks good.”

Am I supposed to respond? My mouth is parched. What questions would a good mother ask?

They spotted something in the CT scan, he explains, speaking so fast I can barely track. I hear “inconclusive.” Something about ordering an MRI. “I certainly don’t want to do any unnecessary biopsying,” he says.

Biopsy?

The word squeezes bile up my throat. It burns there. I might vomit.

Mikey.

Is this how it started with my little brother? This rings a bell, or more like a siren. We’ve always known there was a chance of there being a genetic component to his rare type of cancer.