A Heart for Robbie (7 page)

argued, his eyes flashing.

Julian’s socked feet slid a little on the hardwood floor as he stood.

Sitting with an imaginary guy and trying to piece himself back together

wouldn’t get everything done that he needed to do before Robbie’s

surgery tomorrow.

“Hey, who are you calling imaginary?” Liam asked before he slid

back into the place in Julian’s mind where he lived.

Julian went into his office, pulled his iPad from its charger, and left

it on the small table next to his living room chair on his way to the

kitchen. After putting on a pot of water for pasta, he thawed a container of sauce he had frozen the week before. His mind raced even in his

A Heart for Robbie

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exhaustion as he stood at the stove, and it seemed that he would never be able to shut it off.

Julian drained the finished pasta, plated it, and added the sauce. He

walked past his wine rack, poured a glass of milk instead, and took it into the dining room, where his mail sat waiting. The three bills went into one pile, and he tossed the seven ads into the throwaway pile without another glance. Finally, when he couldn’t put it off anymore, he focused on his

food. He wasn’t hungry, but the rumble in his stomach reminded him that

he had to eat and keep his strength up. Robbie needed him.

Julian rinsed his dishes, started the dishwasher, fell back into his

living room chair, and picked up his iPad. He groaned aloud at the three hundred and seventeen new e-mails. He deleted one immediately, to bring

the number to three sixteen. After scanning it quickly, he deleted all of the posts from various e-mail groups to which he belonged. Normally, he

thrived on the interaction with his fellow authors, but right then, he just didn’t want to deal with it. Ordering his inbox by name, he looked for e-mails he needed to deal with now, those from his agent, his editor, or his publisher. He found two e-mails from his agent, one wishing him luck and one asking how he was doing with his new family addition. Going through

the list, he found more e-mails congratulating him on the birth of his son.

It hurt, to be honest, and Julian just couldn’t force himself to e-mail them back and explain the awful truth.

His head hurt.

His heart hurt.

He just wanted to sleep.

Julian packed four days’ worth of clothes, took two sleeping pills,

set his phone right next to the bed, and succumbed to the drug-induced

sleep. He would take the laptop and get some work done the next day.

Right then, he wanted it all to stop.

THE COMPUTER screen blurred in front of Julian’s eyes as he stared at it in the hospital waiting room less than twelve hours later. He tried to

decide if he should make some kind of blog post about Robbie or simply

announce his son’s birth. Fans were kind of stalkerish with his personal information. It seemed like a lie to hide the truth, as if he was ashamed of his son, but in reality he just couldn’t deal with all of the well-wishers. To 34

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keep telling the story, the prognosis, again and again—he couldn’t deal

with that. Instead, Julian Holmes, best-selling gay novelist, announced the birth of his son and sent one e-mail to his agent explaining the entire story.

He didn’t want to do that, but an explanation had to be given for his lack of future progress on the next book. Writing was the last thing on his mind as he waited to hear about the outcome of his baby boy’s surgery. So that he didn’t completely lose his mind, he wrote a few blog posts so that

Robbie would be able to read them when he was old enough.

“Julian,” his mother prompted, and he looked away from the screen

at the family and friends assembled with him in the waiting room. His

parents, their pastor, his Aunt Marie, and her daughter, Karen, all sat

around him like a fortress, waiting with him for the battle to start. “I’m going to get some coffee. Would you like anything?”

The doctors had told him the surgery would take the better part of

three hours, and so far, only one incredibly slow hour had passed. He’d

counted the seconds over and over until he couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Actually, Mom, I think I’ll go with you,” he announced, much to

everyone’s surprise. He was going stir crazy in this little room with its bubbling fish tank, its babbling television, and its gum-popping teenager who belonged to another family waiting in the room. He just needed to get out.

“I have my cell. Call me if you need anything,” Julian told his father

and followed his mother out of the room.

The walk to the hospital cafeteria wasn’t long enough, the coffee

wasn’t hot enough, and the trip wasn’t distracting enough. They passed

thirteen directional signs, which he found ominous. His phone stayed

silent as Julian and his mother drank bitter lukewarm coffee and talked

about everything except the hell that Robbie was going through in the

operating room. The doctors had given a bored yet complete rundown of

their surgical plan for Robbie in excruciating detail. By the time they were finished, Julian’s chest ached for his son.

“It’s been about two hours. Do you want to go back upstairs? We

can stay down here awhile, if you need to,” Linda asked as she kept

trembling hands wrapped around her coffee cup.

Julian nodded, and they wordlessly got up together to throw away

their garbage. On the way back to the waiting room, they stopped off at

the gift shop, trying desperately to kill time with something other than A Heart for Robbie

35

speculation as to what Robbie endured upstairs. When Julian thought

about them slicing his son’s side with a scalpel, he felt the pain as if it were physical, as if it were his body they ripped open. He roamed

aimlessly through the small shop, passing candy he couldn’t stomach and

magazines that wouldn’t distract him. Clothes, religious trinkets… even

flowers were useless. He saw a small end cap of stuffed animals as he

walked around a display of wind chimes. Before Julian could tell himself that they wouldn’t let Robbie have one, he found a small bear in a hospital gown with a bandage on his tiny brown head. It reminded Julian of the IV

they had put in the right side of Robbie’s scalp and the bandage that

covered the needle. It was such a sweet-looking thing, he couldn’t resist the impulse, so be bought it.

Three hours and forty-two minutes from the time they took Robbie

into surgery, a nurse appeared in the doorway of the waiting room. Marie nudged Julian, who sat absently stroking the fur of his son’s new bear. He looked at the small woman in her nondescript surgical scrubs and couldn’t get a read on her expression. However, he was sure if Robbie hadn’t

survived, they would have sent a doctor to tell him.

“Mr. Holmes?” she asked, though she looked straight at him.

“How is he?” Julian asked, standing up and holding the bear tightly

in one hand.

“He came through surgery very well and is in recovery. I came down

to let you know that the doctor will be by in a while, and you should be able to see your son in the ICU in about an hour.” She smiled at him, and he felt relief drain the very last bit of his energy.

Julian thanked her before falling heavily back into his chair. Bowed

forward, he held his head in his hands, as if the stress of the day were a sandbag around his neck.

“Honey, he’s gotten over the first hurdle,” his mother said as she

tried to rub the tension from between his shoulder blades.

“Yes, but how many more hurdles will he have to clear?”

Later that evening, after everyone else had gone home and Julian sat

looking at the small injured bear that now adorned Robbie’s crib, his heart ached with his decision to let these doctors carve out his son’s heart. He’d told them when they came to give him the result of the surgery. They had him sign yet more forms, starting the process, and scheduled a meeting

with their transplant team. They had no time to waste, once things were set 36

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in motion. Robbie would need to be right at the top of the list in order to get one of the very few hearts to come through their network.

THE SLOW beeping of heart monitors and the occasional swish of nursing

shoes against the tile were the only sounds in the early morning as he sat in the chair next to Robbie’s crib. Almost draconian in design, the chair offered little in the way of padding, but it allowed him to be close to his son. It just wasn’t the best for sleeping. Everyone else had gone home, telling Julian to do the same, but he wouldn’t. He couldn’t leave Robbie so soon after surgery.

Instead, he took out his notebook and a pen. He’d spent so much

time alone lately that he found solace in losing himself in one of his

books. The one he’d started just before Robbie’s birth hadn’t gone

anywhere yet. He was still in the planning stages, but he could count on Liam and Clay to tell their story. They told the story, and he took

dictation. That’s always how it worked. He’d gotten through three books

that way. His characters were more than just fictional manifestations of his own insecurities, hopes, and fears; they were friends.

“Come on, old man, get it up. The pen, I mean, we’ve been stir crazy

here,” a voice murmured against the back of his mind.

Liam. Liam had been with him since the beginning, and his was the

voice Julian always heard first. Julian had poured everything he ever

wanted to be into the courageous, popular, and brilliant lead character, Liam Black.

“You’re not the one who’s supposed to be talking to me. This one

is about Clay,” Julian thought at Liam, not willing to actually talk to his imaginary friend aloud. Hearing voices was never good. It was the last

thing the transplant team needed to know about him. He could see Liam

looking down into the crib of the preemie across the aisle, a little girl with wisps of blonde hair and a cherubic face visible behind her

ventilator tubes.

“Yeah, well, he’ll be along. How’s the kid?”

Julian paused and glanced over to where Robbie lay sleeping in his

crib. A lump formed in his throat as he outlined what the doctors had told him. Thinking about each devastating word just made the pain more real.

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37

When he finished, Liam walked through one of the nurses who had

stopped to check on Robbie, and knelt in front of Julian.

“He’s going to be okay, Julian. You take great care of us. You’ll take

even better care of him.”

“Dude, he killed off Amber,” Clay’s voice said from behind him.

“Well, yeah, but Amber was a dumbass. Who goes down a tunnel

toward the monster all alone? He didn’t kill her, she killed herself.”

“Yeah, I guess.” The voice quieted for a moment.

Julian glanced again at the notebook in his hands, wondering if

they’d come to work or just console him. He didn’t care either way. The

ICU, much like his living room at night the last few years, felt cold and lonely.

“As long as neither of us become red shirts on the away team

expedition he’s written, we’re all good,” Liam said, with a small measure of hope peeking around the edges of his words.

“Of course I’m not going to kill either of you. It’s a YA novel. I’d

never write again.”

“Well, it’s good to know you have your priorities,” Clay snorted.

“And it’s not that you like us or anything.”

“Okay, let’s throw some ideas around and try to distract Julian for a

bit. You know how he likes a good circle jerk.” Liam snickered, and Julian blushed, even though no one else in the room could hear the conversation going on in his head.

“I totally think you should make Eve a guy,” Clay said suddenly.

“Just to fuck with Liam. Make him a guy who likes to dress up like a girl.”

“Dude!” Liam said, just as Julian put his head down into his hands

and started to laugh.

His shoulders shook, and tears streamed into his cupped fingers. The

emotional devastation of the last few days manifested itself in a giggle fit so profound, he didn’t know if he’d recover. After a few minutes, as his silent laughter began to subside, a hand fell on his shoulder. Julian looked up, and his tearful gaze met that of Brenda, the night nurse in charge of Robbie’s care for the next few hours.

“Uh-oh,” Clay whispered, and Julian had to work not to look at

where he stood next to Robbie’s bed. Julian could just make out the sleek lines of his Black Varen T-shirt.

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“Julian, are you okay?” the nurse asked as she bent forward to be eye

level with him. She pushed a lock of chunky brown hair back off her face and smiled sadly.

“Oh, uhm…,” Julian said, wiping a hand across his face.

“It all got to be too much,” Liam whispered fiercely.

“It… it just caught up with me. I’m okay,” he told her quietly. “I

think I’m going to hit the vending machine, maybe stretch my legs a bit.”

“I know that it has to be overwhelming for you. No one here is going

to judge you for getting emotional. It’s okay to cry.”

“I appreciate that.” Julian stood up and set his notebook and pen in

the vacated chair. Clay led the way, stepping to the side when they

reached the door so Julian could open it. Then he and Liam followed him

out into the hallway before anyone said another word. The halls were

devoid of visitors, with a minimum amount of hospital staff. It was quiet.

Julian liked quiet.

He opted for Cheetos and a Diet Pepsi. It wasn’t the most nutritious

snack, and considering he hadn’t been to the gym in weeks, probably not

his best choice, but he wanted the cheese-dusted, carb-filled comfort. Food and drink weren’t allowed in the ICU, so they went into the nearby lounge and sat in three chairs already pulled together and abandoned by a family desperate for closeness. The other twelve chairs sat empty. Why did this hospital hate even numbers of chairs?