30. Dana

Chapter 30

Dana

R espiratory Syncytial Virus or RSV, leading to a severe case of pneumonia.

Finally, I had answers.

On the top floor of the infant ward in Denver's Children's Hospital, I stood over my son as tubes and wires kept him alive and breathing. He would get through this. But recovery would be long, and Drew would need to stay in the hospital until he was given a full bill of health.

I still wanted to punch a hole through my sister's face.

"You'll keep him past the point when he's first recovered," Cole said, his voice low on the other side of the room as he spoke to the doctor. "Long enough to ensure there's no complications. Do you understand?"

"Stop," I sighed. "I don't even know if you guys take my insurance yet. He'll stay just as long as he needs to in order to get better and then we'll go."

"Oh, that's taken care of already, Ms. Beechings," Dr. Stanley said, her clipboard tucked in tight to her chest.

"You take my insurance then?"

"Well, of that I'm not entirely sure, but it's all been covered by Mr. Pearson." She glanced at Cole before taking a step back. "I'll be back with some paperwork for you to sign."

She left, closing the door quietly behind her.

I didn't have the energy to fight him on that, at least not now. But fuck, it weighed heavily on me as I sat down in the plush chair beside my son's bed. He didn't even know he was the father, yet here he was offering to be financially responsible for potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars on a kid that, as far as he knew, wasn't even his.

But I was still angry with him.

He'd disappeared. He hadn't called nor had he answered any of my calls. He turned up when things got bad only because Gray had told him what happened. I knew there was a high probability he had relapsed.

Despite his generosity, every part of me screamed to tell him to leave.

"Dana," Cole began, but the little wheeze and cry from Drew was enough for me to leave whatever he wanted to say behind.

————

The silence that hung between me and Cole felt heavier by the second. The sun rose, and he stayed. It set, and he stayed. It rose again, and there he was, looking ten times worse than he did when he'd first arrived, his eyes focused intently on Drew as he tried to stick his giraffe through the oxygen mask.

A female figure at the door, sans scrubs, made my heart rate spike before it opened. There stood Lottie in all her glory, a coffee cup in hand and a smile plastered to her face.

"I know you're having a shit time but you need a break," she said. "Come on."

I blinked at her before briefly locking eyes with Cole. "Lots, I love you, but I'm not leaving Drew."

"I know," she grinned.

Sticking her free hand into the bag at her side, she fished out a little nanny cam and stuck it to the desk opposite Drew's bed. "You can keep an eye on him while we go get bagels or something downstairs."

"But—"

"I'll watch him, Dana," Cole said, his voice thick with sleep and the weight of nearly forty-eight hours of tense silence. He sat up straight in his chair. "Go."

I stilled, glancing between the two of them. I didn't want to leave him alone with Cole if what I thought was true. But I'd also been with him nonstop for almost two days. If he was drinking, the only privacy he had was the en suite bathroom. He appeared sober, acted sober, but so did Mom when she fucked up.

Lottie gave me a single nod. "He's got it."

"Okay."

————

I stared at the screen of Lottie's phone, watching as Cole walked a little plastic dinosaur across Drew's legs and forced a sickly giggle from him.

"You have to eat," Lottie said, shoving a cream-cheese-filled bagel into my hand. "If you want to take care of him, you have to take care of yourself, too."

We were sitting outside, away from the stale hospital environment, trying to get some fresh air. I sighed and set the phone on the picnic table, leaving the stream running.

"I just feel fucking sick. It's all too much."

"The bagel or the world?"

"Both."

"Well, you can't fix the world," Lottie sighed, breaking off a piece of the bagel and holding it out for me. I glared at her. "But you can eat the bagel."

I plucked it from her fingers and stuffed it in my mouth, savoring the first real food I'd had in days.

"You're not a bad mother, if that's what you're worried about," Lottie said gently. "You couldn't have prevented this."

I snorted as I took another bite from my bagel. "I absolutely could have. I could have gotten a second opinion. I could have gone back to the doctor instead of waiting for the meds they gave him to work. I could have kicked my piece of shit sister out the moment she arrived. I could have stayed in Hawaii."

She shot me a glare. "If you'd stayed in Hawaii, you wouldn't have Drew."

"I wouldn't have Cole."

"You can't possibly regret Cole enough to wish your son wasn't born," she deadpanned, side-eying the monitor and taking a bite of her bagel. "I know you better than that."

"No, of course not," I sighed. "But fuck, life would be easier. And I wouldn't have all this guilt and all these problems."

"You'd have just as many problems, just different ones."

It was my turn to shoot a glare at her.

Silence fell between us for a moment as we both ate, our gazes locked on Cole as he climbed onto the side of Drew's bed, careful of the wires and tubes, and settled in next to him to read him a book. I hated the way that it tugged at my heart.

"Do you think he's relapsed?" I asked, the words hanging between us for a moment. I wished I could hear what Cole was reading him. "I can't stop thinking about it."

Lottie sighed. "I don't know. I don't think so, but it's hard to tell with him," she said, her voice small, quieter. "If you're asking if I know anything, I honestly don't. I'd tell you this time."

"I need to know for sure," I breathed. "I don't know what to do. I need to tell him the truth, but if he has fallen down that path again, I can't do it. I can't have him around Drew. Not after this, not after the shit with my mom, but I don't want to keep him from his son, either."

"I wish I knew the answer," Lottie said, her gaze breaking from the phone and turning to me. "But you know me, Dana. I lost my mom way too young. I would have taken an alive and present mom, even if she was a drunk, over a dead mom any day."

The backs of my eyes burned the longer I watched Cole and Drew together. He fit so perfectly with Drew, as if by instinct. "What if I have it wrong? What if I tell him I can't do it anymore, but he's fine, no relapse? What if I make the wrong choice?"

"Drew's still young. He won't start remembering things until he's four, five maybe."

"But Cole won't get that time back," I rasped. The back of my throat stung from the days of waterworks. "And neither will I."

Lottie took another bite as she mulled it over. "You know, it's estimated that about fifty percent of recovering alcoholics relapse in their first year," she said, her hand reaching out to squeeze my free one. "And half of them return to sobriety afterward. They told us that when we contacted the rehab facility for him."

"But half of them don't."

"Glass half full."

"Glass half empty," I retorted. "I can't look at it like that when I know my mother."

As if conjured by the fucking devil, the doors of the hospital slid open, and there she was in all her horrible glory, looking almost as much of a mess as me. Behind her, my sister followed closely, her arms over her chest and a sour expression coating her face.

Of course, they clocked me.

I made a move to get up, but Lottie's hand kept me down.

With every step Mom took, the wind blew against her gray, thinning hair, sending it flying in the breeze. Her pudgy form seemed shorter, weaker, than the last time I'd seen her about six years ago. Her face had barely changed, just a few new wrinkles that didn't make her any less of the monster she was.

"Can we talk?" she asked, her voice as small as a fucking rodent's as she wrapped her arms around herself.

"Absolutely fucking not," I snapped. I grabbed Lottie's phone from the table, taking one last passing glance as Cole closed the book and snuggled up to my son among the wires, before shoving it into her purse.

"Honey," Mom said, causing a snort to escape out of me. "Please. I'm better now."

"She's been sober for six fucking years," Vee barked from behind her.

"Is that supposed to erase the twenty-two years before it?" I pushed myself up from the bench, shoving the last bite of my bagel into my mouth as I motioned for Lottie to join me. Without a question, she did.

"No, but I want to help, Dana," Mom bleated.

I almost had the balls to throw a punch when she took a step toward me. Almost.

The emotions took back over, running through my body like the IV drip Drew was surviving on, and before I could do anything drastic, Lottie stepped between us. "You're okay," she said to me, her wide eyes getting wider as she took me in.

I had no idea what I looked like. Didn't know if the burn behind my eyes and the well of tears was visible, didn't know if the stress and anger I was carrying on my shoulders could be seen by the naked eye. But just Mom's presence, her pushiness, her assumption that she could waltz back into my life without even an apology, was enough to spring it all back to life inside of me.

"Let's go back," Lottie said. "Let's go see Drew."

————

I scrubbed my eyes with the base of my palms as I walked the corridors of the top floor alone. Lottie had received some kind of business call, and although she'd insisted she could let it be, I'd lied and said I'd be fine.

I felt anything but fine.

I tried to catch my breath as I approached our room, but each one was shaky at best, the tears coating my cheeks and demanding to be present. I just wanted to be able to calm down. I wanted to rewind back to relaxing on the beach in Costa Rica, wanted to watch Cole panic as Drew shoved sand in his mouth. I wanted it more than just about anything.

When I reached the doorway, I stopped. Cole was still lying beside Drew, his fingers walking up the length of his little body before stopping on the top of his head, making him giggle that sickly, snotty laugh of his since he'd gotten sick. The smile on Cole's face was the brightest I'd seen in weeks.

I had half a mind to ask him to leave, to take my son into my arms and tell him that I wouldn't accept his money and he needed to go. But the other half, the weaker half, the one that was tired and angry and missed him, wanted nothing more than to join him and Drew on the bed, to laugh and joke together. I wanted to snuggle into him. I wanted his comfort, his presence.

I couldn't choose.

I stayed there in the doorway, watching him from across the room, standing on my metaphorical fence, wishing I had a hammer to beat it to the ground.

I had a question, and a sinking stone in my stomach that knew the answer.