Accelerated (4 page)

Jess put her tray down at the table next to Sean. “How’s the lunch here?” she asked. “It looks amazing.”

He had no idea how lunch was. “Let’s see.” He took a bite of the salmon. “Mmmm.”

Isaac zoomed in for prime real estate next to Jess, but promptly turned his back on her, pushing away his nutritious gourmet meal.

“Knight to B4,” Isaac said to Luke. The red bumps on Luke’s neck looked nasty. Even more unappetizing was Isaac’s painfully tedious account of a national chess tournament he’d won that weekend in Florida. He paused for dramatic tension. “And check.”

“Isaac, eat,” Jess said, taking a bite of pork tenderloin. It looked like something you’d order at a restaurant.

He tried to imagine eating like this every day, but that was depressing because unless he came to school with Toby, there was no way it was going to happen.

“I don’t eat lunch,” Isaac said, and made a face at Jess’s food. “Do you know how they raise pigs? It’s revolting. The conditions in the slaughterhouses are barbaric.”

Sean let his fork drop. “Thanks for that.”

“Grab a PB&J or something,” Jess suggested.

“The Bradley School is a nut-free zone,” he said. “Besides, I’m not hungry.”

Calvin pushed his tray away nervously. “Me neither.”

“May I please be excused?” Isaac asked.

“Lunch isn’t over yet,” Jess said. “Why don’t you guys tell me about yourselves? Which sports do people like to play? I played lacrosse in college.”

“Ivy League?” Drew asked.

“Trinity,” she said without missing a beat.

Isaac looked at his Tourneau watch. “I have to go to the nurse.”

“I have a pony,” Nina said. Her velour top exclaimed STAR! in purple rhinestones. “I ride her in competition.”

“I have to go to the nurse, too,” Luke said.

“Me too,” Marcus said.

They’d each pushed their food around their plates to make it look like they’d eaten something, just like the girls in college used to do.

“You should have our names on the list.”

“Oh right. The list.” Jess reached into her bag and produced a clipboard and checked it. “Okay, anyone who has permission can go to the nurse now.”

Marcus, Luke, Calvin, Isaac, and Kayla got up to leave.

“You sure you all need to go?” she asked, as a few more kids got up from the other third-grade table.

Kayla waved as she followed the boys.

“What’s that about?” Sean whispered.

She shrugged and turned back to the remaining kids. “I guess something’s going around.”

“Knock-knock,” Zack said.

“Who’s there?” Toby happily obliged.

“Yah.”

“Yah who?”

“What are you so excited about?”

The kids howled. The exodus had barely registered with them. Sean made a mental note to buy Toby some Flintstones vitamins. Just to be safe.

“Dad, want to come to computer class?” Toby asked, as Sean scraped his plate. “We’re going to make pictures on the Mac to go with our Thanksgiving essays.”

“Let’s try not to get me fired on my first day,” Jess said, winking at Sean.

“Seems fair.” He turned to Toby. “I’ve got to get to work anyway.”

When everyone had bussed their trays in an orderly fashion, Miss Bix herded the class out of the dining room.

Jess extended her hand. This was the end of the road. Except for one minor detail. “My coat,” he said. “It’s still in your classroom.”

“Come on,” she said. He followed her into the hallway where a pack of teachers waited for the elevators. Something familiar flashed across her features. It was the same look Toby had given him on the first day of kindergarten when he’d been thrown into a room full of strangers.

“Why don’t we take the stairs,” he suggested. “Work off all that fancy food.”

“Sure.” He heard a touch of relief in her voice.

“So how’s the first day going?” he asked as they entered the stairwell, which was decorated with fifth-grade maps of Europe.

“Better than I expected.”

“It takes a while to get the hang of this bunch.” He paused. “You’re doing great.”

“It’s … not like other schools.”

“So you didn’t go to a Bradley either?”

Her laugh was loud and spontaneous. Like an exhale. “Not by a long shot.”

He was looking at her, not at the stairs, when his foot came down on a soft, uneven surface that sent him flying into the facing wall. Jess grabbed the railing just in time to stop herself.

“Oh my God!” she gasped when she saw what it was.

Calvin was lying half on the third floor landing, half on the step. “Calvin,” he said. “Are you okay?” Sean’s heart raced as he knelt down.

“Calvin!” he screamed. “Calvin!” Screaming at Calvin was ridiculous. The kid needed help, not a hearing aid. He steadied Calvin’s head, which was jerking from side to side against one of the sandpaper-lined steps. His body shuddered and flailed and his eyes rolled back in his head. “It’s okay, buddy,” he said, having no idea if that was true. “It’s gonna be okay.”

“Call 911,” Jess said. She held Calvin’s head to free up Sean’s hands, and he pulled his phone from his back pocket. In his entire life, he’d never dialed 911, and when the operator answered he stumbled over the information. He told her everything he knew, which, he realized, was very little.

“They’ll be here soon,” he said. Adrenaline pulsed through him.

“What should I do?”

“His medical file.” Sean hadn’t been able to answer any of the questions the operator was asking. “We should have it for the paramedics.”

“I’ll get the nurse,” she said. “Can you, um …” She gestured toward Calvin with her head and Sean traded places with her. “I’ll be fast,” she said, and sprinted down the stairs.

She was back a minute later, a sheen of sweat on her forehead. “Any change?”

He shook his head. Nurse Astrid lugged her well-padded body up the stairs, a full flight behind Jess. He wondered if Astrid had ever taken the stairs in her life. The nurse getup—white uniform, white stockings, white orthopedic shoes—was out of the fifties. At least she didn’t wear the cap.

“No preexisting conditions,” she said, reading from the file and gasping for breath. “Nothing. Let me see him.” She knelt down awkwardly and took his pulse. “It’s fast,” she said, almost angry. “Where’s the ambulance? We need the ambulance,” she screamed. The costume couldn’t hide the fact that she was helpless and scared.

Within minutes, the paramedics arrived and strapped Calvin onto a stretcher, carried him downstairs, and loaded him into an idling ambulance.

The air outside sliced through his shirt. Jess hugged her arms across her chest, shivering. Bev Shineman, the school psychologist, barreled onto the sidewalk in a long down coat, her hand gripped in a fist around her cell phone. “I have calls in to his parents and both his nannies.” She stared at them. “How are you two holding up?” She added it, almost as an afterthought.

“Fine,” he said, even though his heart rate was still way too fast and his knees were rubber.

Shineman’s cell phone rang. It must have been Calvin’s parents because she lowered her voice and walked quickly away as she spoke.

Jess had a funny look on her face, like she might cry.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah.” She tried reassuring him with a smile. “Fine.”

“I need an adult,” the paramedic barked from the back of the ambulance. She stared at him, then at Jess. “Who’s coming?”

S
EAN HAD NEVER ENTERED
M
OUNT
S
INAI THROUGH THE AMBULANCE
entrance and was disoriented as he raced after Calvin’s gurney into pediatric emergency, otherwise known as hell. Inside, he recognized the windowless room from last year when Toby had fallen off of Calvin’s bunk bed and hit his head on the way down. He’d turned out to be fine, but the six hours in emergency had traumatized them all. Looking around now, he recognized the terror on the faces of the desperate parents trying to calm screaming babies, cool fevers, and staunch bleeding.

A team of doctors who looked like they were just out of med school circled Calvin, listening to his heart and taking his pulse. The paramedics reported what they knew: no preexisting conditions, no allergies, all in all a healthy eight-year-old boy.

A 12-year-old in a doctor’s coat turned to Sean. “Can you tell me what happened today?” Her eyes were huge and dark like in Japanese animé.

“Um …” He had no idea what had happened. “I … we found him on the stairs. He was unconscious and kind of … flailing around.”

“Does your son have any known allergies to medicine, food, anything you can think of?”

“I’m not his father.” He’d tried to make that clear in the ambulance. “But I don’t think Calvin has allergies. According to the file, I mean.”

“Have there been any changes to his routine recently? Has he taken any medication or been out of the country? Has this ever happened before?” She stared at him with her cartoon eyes waiting for something. Anything.

“I don’t think so. I have no idea,” he stammered. “I’m not his …”

Shineman rushed in. “There you are,” she panted. She reeked of breath mints. “His parents are on their way.”

“Let’s get him on a monitor and take his vitals.” An orderly in teddy bear scrubs began sticking electrodes on Calvin’s chest.

Sean heard Cal Drake before he saw him. “Where the hell is my son?” he boomed. His footsteps were heavy but fast. He raced around the corner and stopped short when he saw Calvin lying motionless, hooked up to oxygen, with an IV in his left arm. Melanie trailed a few paces behind. When she caught up, she let out a gasp. “Calvin!” she sobbed and tunneled through the sea of residents and interns to hold her son.

“Jesus Christ.” Cal exhaled slowly. He looked around for what he considered to be a real doctor, but finally focused on the girl with cartoon eyes, who was marking information on a chart. “What’s wrong with him? Will he be okay?”

“When we finish these tests we’ll know more,” she said.

He turned angrily to Shineman. “What the hell happened?”

“He collapsed on the stairs,” she said. “Sean and the new third-grade teacher found him there. They may have saved his life.”

Melanie turned her head toward Sean and mouthed
thank you
through a stream of tears. Cal glared at Shineman, concentrating all his fear, helplessness, and hostility into tasers that shot from his eyes. “What the fuck was my son doing in the stairwell by himself?”

Shineman spoke extra quietly to counteract the yelling. “This is a tense time,” she said. “For everyone.”

“Oh, you’re going to feel a lot of tension,” Cal spit out. “Believe me! I entrust my son’s safety to you and this is how you protect him?” His voice escalated, though it hadn’t seemed possible. “I’d like an answer to my question.” His nostrils flared. He was waiting—for an answer, for someone to blame. The doctors furiously took readings and looked about as bewildered as Sean felt.

As her husband tore Shineman a new one, Melanie clung to her son, kissing his hand and begging him to wake up. She wouldn’t remember the details of any of this. He could see that everything else had fallen away, that she was channeling everything she had into willing Calvin to be all right. Watching her sob over Calvin, he imagined Toby on the gurney. If he didn’t slip out now, he would start crying too. He backed away slowly. “I should go,” he said, even though no one heard or cared. “I hope Calvin’s okay.”

As soon as he hit the sidewalk, he broke into a run. He had no destination, just a need to get somewhere fast. It was below freezing and Sean had left his jacket in Toby’s classroom. When he saw the sign for Hanratty’s, he knew that was where he was going. He plopped himself at the bar, leaving a few empty seats between himself and a middle-aged man whose nose and cheeks blossomed in a web of burst capillaries. The man wore a ridiculous turtleneck covered with lobsters and was sweating alcohol.

The bartender dropped a paper coaster in front of Sean. “What can I get you?”

“Bloody Mary,” he said, before he’d made the decision. Drinking in the afternoon was always a bad idea. But he knew there was no way an overpriced cup of Starbucks coffee was going to do the trick. Besides, he reasoned, Bloody Marys were a daytime drink. “House vodka’s fine.”

Sean drank in silence and pretended to be riveted by a rerun of an old Lakers/Knicks game from the nineties on the flat-screen television behind the bar. He watched a young Billy Horn dribble through the Lakers’ best guys over and over to make six easy layups in a row. There was no denying he used to be a basketball god.

When the door opened again, a young, preppy guy bounded in, beaming unguardedly. “Hey man,” he said to the bartender. “Can I order some food to go?”

The bartender handed him a menu.

The guy picked it up, but didn’t have the patience to read it. “Do you have shrimp cocktail? My wife wants shrimp cocktail and I told her I’d find it for her. You have it, right?”

“We’ve got shrimp scampi,” the bartender said.

The guy considered it for a minute. “Yeah, okay,” he said in an annoyingly upbeat tone. “That’ll probably be fine. I’ll take an order of that to go.” He looked at Sean and the alcoholic next to him, and then at their drinks. “And I’ll have a beer. You know, while I wait.”

He sat at the bar and kicked his feet against his stool and fiddled with the coaster. The energy of the place was suddenly all messed up. The kid was going to want to make conversation. He could feel it.

“I just had a baby,” the kid blurted out. “I mean, my wife did.”

So his mood was pure joy. Sean decided to cut him some slack. “Congratulations.” He saluted with the Bloody Mary. “Boy or girl?”

“She’s a girl. Savannah. She’s got these little dimples.” He pulled his phone from his down jacket and stared scrolling through what seemed like hundreds of photos. He stopped on a picture of his new family. At home in an album somewhere, Sean had an almost identical photo of himself and Toby and Ellie that had been taken eight years ago at Mount Sinai. He loved that photo. In it, Ellie’s hospital gown is slipping, her hair is a mess, and she looks like she’s been through hell. She’d never looked more beautiful. In the photo they’re happy. In love. Hopeful. That first night they’d stared at Toby for hours. “This is it,” Ellie had said as they watched their child. “We’re in it for the long haul.”