Come Home (6 page)

“Still in the laundry room.” Jill had seen them on the top of the hamper. She hadn’t gotten to the wash yet. “I’ll wash them tonight, okay?”

“Okay.” Megan took a bunchy set of old sweats out of the drawer, stuffed them in her gym bag, then hurried to her bathroom. “Oh Jeez,” she said softly.

Jill went to the bathroom, which had been left in disarray. The shower door hung open, the shampoo lay on its side, and a pile of wet towels sat on the floor. “Sorry, honey.”

“It’s okay. She must’ve been so upset.” Megan grabbed her conditioner and shampoo and tossed them into her bag, then looked over at the bed, with wet eyes. “Uh-oh, we woke her up.”

Jill turned around to see Abby sitting up in bed, raking back her long hair, and Megan heaved a little sob, dropped her bag, and hurried over to the bed.

“Abby, I’m so sorry about your Dad.” Megan reached for her, and Abby raised her arms, equally teary, and the two embraced, crying and hugging each other, like two halves of the same, broken heart.

Standing to the side, Jill felt her throat catch, sad and happy, both at once. She loved seeing the sisters reunited, but not on the worst day they could share, and she thought of all the times they had consoled each other, growing up. When Megan hadn’t gotten a speaking part in
Annie,
Abby threw her a pity party with a pint of vanilla Häagen-Dazs, chenille bathrobes, and an “I Will Survive” mixtape. And when a mean girl had teased Abby about her low PSAT scores, Megan had treated her to sundaes at Friendly’s, with money she had earned babysitting.
Ice cream fixes everything,
Megan had said, and they had laughed through their tears. But not this morning.

Jill could hear the tremor in Abby’s voice as she buried her head in Megan’s neck. “I’m sorry, too, for you. I know you loved him, too.”

“It’s so horrible. I can’t even believe it.”

“That’s just what I think. I can’t believe it.” Abby released Megan, wiping her eyes. “I just tell myself, this isn’t really happening. It’s not. It’s not even possible.”

“I know, you must be so sad, I’m so sad for you.” Megan looked stricken all over again, but was trying to compose herself, wiping her eyes. “I’m so sorry, I don’t even know what to say.”

“I love you, Megs.” Abby sniffled, sad again. “Sorry, I’m such a crybaby.”

“I love you, too.” Megan frowned, her lower lips trembling, seeming to cry and smile, both at once. “It’s hard, I mean, he’s your
Dad
.”

“I know, and your Mom was so nice.” Abby stifled a sob. “And you, thanks for the nightgown. It’s my old one, remember?”

“Yes, sure.” Megan tried to smile again, straightening up. “I still wear it, it got softer.”

“I know, right?” Abby managed a smile, too. “You look so awesome, you’re so skinny. Can’t call you Mega anymore, huh?”

“No.” Megan smiled at the old nickname.

“You have braces now? I thought you didn’t need them.”

“I know. My teeth shifted, doesn’t that suck?” Megan touched her mouth, self-conscious. “Two more years, and this is so lame but I have to go, I have practice.”

“It’s okay, I know. I hated those early morning practices.” Abby rubbed her forehead, and she seemed a little pale, even in the dim light. “God, I feel lousy. My head is killing me.”

Sam appeared at the doorway, in his bathrobe. “Hey, ladies,” he said, smiling, but it vanished when he sized up the scene. “I thought I would make banana pancakes, if anybody wants some. Abby, want to try my specialty?”

“Pancakes, yuck. I feel so sick.” Abby leaned over, and before anybody knew what was happening, she was vomiting on the bed. Megan recoiled, and Sam blanched.

“Here, honey.” Jill snatched up a wastebasket and rushed over, but Abby heaved again, spewing vomit on the bedclothes.

“Ugh, no, sorry, guys.”

“Come on, sweetie, let’s get you into the bathroom.” Jill set the wastebasket down, took Abby’s arm, hustled her out of bed, and got her to the bathroom just as she heaved all over her nightgown, the used towels, and the tile floor. Jill got her to the toilet, where she dropped to her knees, and Jill held her hair back.

“Mom, I’m gonna be late!” Megan called out from the bedroom. “Sorry, Abby, I have to go!”

“Hold on, honey!” Jill called back, torn. She wanted to say good-bye to Megan, to make sure she was okay, but she couldn’t leave Abby. She felt ripped in half, with both girls grieving and needy, but she couldn’t be in both places at once. “Just hang on one sec! I want to see you before you go!”

“I’m late, Mom, and Courtney’s mom is waiting! I can’t wait! Bye, I love you!”

“Oh, no.” Abby began to retch into the toilet, and Jill couldn’t leave her, holding her hair.

“I love you, too! Take it easy this morning! Call if you want to come home!”

“She will!” Sam called back, and Jill felt a wrench in her chest, knowing it meant Megan had left.

Abby coughed, spitting. “Please, close the door. This is so embarrassing.”

“Don’t worry, wipe your mouth.” Jill handed her some toilet paper, then closed the bathroom door. “Be still. Let your stomach relax.”

“Thanks,” Abby said, thickly. She wiped her mouth. “I’m so sorry.”

“Make sure you’re finished. Take your time.” Jill rubbed her back. “There’s still some things you haven’t thrown up on.”

Abby smiled and let the paper drop in the toilet. “I’m done.”

“Good. Let me help you up.” Jill steadied Abby, flushed the toilet, and put down the lid, with a
clunk.
“Sit here until your head clears.”

“Thanks.” Abby sat down and put her head in her hands. “Sorry, I ruined our nightgown. Can you help me take it off? It reeks.”

“Reach for the moon.” Jill lifted the nightgown off and dropped it on the floor with the soiled towels. She took Megan’s bathrobe from the hook and handed it to Abby. “Here, stay warm.”

“I’m not a drunk girl, I swear. If I were, I wouldn’t be this sick.”

“I know, honey.” Jill eyed Abby, straightening up on the seat. “Okay, wash up and I’ll be right back.”

“Okay.”

Jill left the bathroom and went into the bedroom, where Sam was balling up the comforter on the bed. “How was she? Was she crying when she left?”

“She’ll be fine. I gave her a big hug. I say we throw out this comforter and buy a new one.”

“No, don’t. She loves it, and I’m not sure they make it anymore. It’ll have to go to the Laundromat. I’ll take it when I get back.”

“I’ll do it, and by the way, Sandy emailed me to say that she’d squeeze Abby in next week, anytime.”

“Jill!” Abby called from the bathroom. “Help!”

“That’s great, thanks,” Jill said, already hurrying back to the bathroom.

Chapter Seven

“How are you doing, little guy?” Jill smiled at little Rahul Choudhury, an adorable one-year-old she was about to examine. She’d spent the morning treating a leaky procession of sniffles, fevers, and sinus infections, all the while worrying about Abby and Megan. They say a mother is only as happy as her happiest child, and it applied to stepmothers and ex-stepmothers, too.

“He’s such a good baby,” said his mother, Padma, steadying Rahul as he sat on the examining table, wobbly in his thick diaper. She was a pretty woman with a ready smile, dressed in a blue cotton sweater, khakis, and clogs. Jill would have normally worn a similar outfit, but she was dressed for the memorial service, in a dark jersey suit. Like most pediatricians, she never wore a lab coat, because children tended to associate them with needles.

“Rahul, hello, what a good boy you are.” Jill wiggled her stethoscope, and Rahul’s round, dark eyes focused on it so intently that they crossed slightly, under a sloping fringe of eyelashes that any woman would kill for. She kept it wiggling, initiating a tug of war with the baby, and felt satisfied when he reached out, made a swipe for the black rubber tubing, and caught it in his tight little fist. “Good for you! You’re strong, Rahul. You work out?”

Padma smiled. “I hate when he’s sick. I don’t have time for him to be sick.”

“I know just what you mean.” Jill was thinking of Megan, with no time to cry. She tickled Rahul, and he giggled, drooling. “It’s so easy to make a baby laugh. I should do standup, for infants.”

Padma chuckled. “All my sons are fans of yours. Roy loves it when you ask him if he brought his heart today.”

“Aww, good.” Jill didn’t add that joking around was part of her exam. The first thing she did with a patient was to engage him, to see if he was sick or not. One of her pediatrics professors had called it the
gestalt,
or the big picture, and her
gestalt
about Rahul wasn’t good. “Now, how long did you say he’d been sick?”

“Since Thursday. It’s another ear infection. He tugged at his ear most of last night, and I know, I was up, on the phone with my mother, in Mumbai. She’s not feeling well.”

“Oh no, I hope she feels better. You have your hands full.” Jill had read the notes from the nurse, who had taken Rahul’s vitals. Nothing was remarkable except a fever, at 101 degrees. Anything between 97.5 and 100.3 was normal. “When did Rahul get the fever?”

“This morning, it’s new. I wanted to get him on amoxicillin before it gets worse, because I have the week from hell coming up. Two field trips, one for Roy and the other for Devi.”

“Yikes. Got Xanax?”

Padma laughed, and Jill realized she’d made the joke because she must have been thinking of William. It was odd that he was taking prescription drugs, but she tried to put it out of her mind. She offered Rahul a finger in trade for her stethoscope and listened to his lungs, hearing transmitted upper-airway sounds. She checked his ears, and there was purulent fluid, or pus behind the drum.

“How’s Dave?” Jill asked. Padma’s husband Dave was in the Army Reserves, serving in Afghanistan.

“Fine, and he says hi and thanks for those books you sent. They all shared them. Thanks so much.”

“Please, it’s the least I can do.” Jill looked in Rahul’s nose, mouth, and throat, and they showed redness, irritation, and post-nasal drip, all consistent with a viral URI, or upper respiratory tract infection. “I give you so much credit, doing all that you do, on your own.”

“Sometimes it gets to me, but most of the time, I do okay.”

“I’m sure, but you can always vent to me, you know that. Email or call, I mean it.”

“Thanks.” Padma smiled, but Jill knew she wouldn’t take her up on the offer.

“Tell me, how are the boys?” Jill palpated the lymph nodes in Rahul’s neck, both the anterior and the posterior chain, and the anterior were slightly enlarged, also consistent with a URI and ear infection.

“Doing well in school, and they’re brown belts, both of them.”

“Wow, that’s great!”

“But they miss their father, so much.”

“I’m sure, poor things.” Jill found herself thinking of Abby and Victoria, and how much they would miss William. She’d have to get Abby to the therapist to deal with her grief, instead of talking about murder. “I bet it’s been hard on them.”

“It has been, but we email and Skype, so that helps.”

“That’s good.” Jill lay Rahul down gently and palpated his belly, liver, and spleen, all of which were also slightly enlarged, again, consistent with his little body trying to fight the infection. But for some reason, he was losing the battle, too often. It was Rahul’s fifth ear infection this year and he’d also had a pneumonia, which worried her.

“How old is Megan, now?” Padma cupped the back of Rahul’s head with her hand. “In middle school?”

“Yes, if you feed them, they grow. Right, handsome?” Jill spoke to Rahul, and he broke into a smile, with wet lips, which showed he wasn’t dehydrated. To double-check, she pinched him gently on the arm, and his skin didn’t tent. “What a tough guy! No crying, huh?”

“He’s the third. They learn.”

Jill smiled, stroking Rahul’s soft cheek, noting his color. His Indian ancestry gave his skin a glow, but she’d trained at D.C. Children’s, where she’d seen kids of all races, and she thought he was febrile, feverish. “He look flushed to you, Dr. Mom?”

“He always does when he gets an ear infection. So, do you have a wedding dress yet?”

“I’m thinking a lab coat. It’s white, right?”

Padma laughed. “Come on, tell me everything. It’s fun to talk girly stuff. I love being a boy mom, but I wish for something with ruffles at times.”

“Well, I do have a suit, a nice one.” Jill palpated the axillary lymph nodes under Rahul’s armpits, which were also swollen. “Megan’s addicted to
Say Yes to the Dress,
so I’m failing her as a mother.”

“I know that feeling. It comes with the territory.”

“Ha!” Jill peeked inside Rahul’s diaper, which was clean and dry. “They’ll grow up and realize how lucky they were, but by then, we’ll be dead.”

Padma laughed.

Jill’s last stop was to examine Rahul’s skin, and she noticed a tiny patch on his right arm, which reminded her of something about his older brother, also a patient. “Roy has hay fever. Do you or Dave?”

“Yes, I do. Why?”

“Look at this.” Jill showed her the patch. “This is eczema.”

“Really?” Padma peered at it, frowning. “I thought it was a rash, or maybe poison ivy. He was playing in the grass yesterday while I weeded.”

“It’s not uncommon in babies, and it’s nothing to worry about. But we call asthma, allergies, and eczema, the allergic triad. It runs in families, and several of them can be in the same child.”

“They do, I know, in my family.”

“Let me see the rest of you, Rahul.” Jill examined the skin on his chest, legs, neck, and back, with its tiny scapula, like the nubs of angel wings. There were no other eczema patches. “How’s he eating?”

“Not great, but not terrible.”

“Drinking?”

“Okay.”

“Sleeping? You said he tugs at his ear?”

“Yes, off and on, at night.”

“Poor little guy.” Jill looked up and met Padma’s eye. “I think you’re right, it’s another ear infection, but he gets a lot of ear infections for a baby who’s not in day care. On the other hand, he has older brothers, so I bet he gets all the colds they bring home from school.” Padma’s eyebrows sloped down unhappily. “Do you think he should get tubes? My brother does, and they helped my nephew.”