Accelerated (22 page)

Toby was nodding yes but his eyes said no. “Why?”

“Because, you know, it feels good.”

“And does stuff come out? Kayla says stuff comes out.”

What was an eight-year-old girl doing with this kind of information? “Yeah, that can happen. It’s totally normal.” He was sure this was the part of the conversation where he was supposed to make his son comfortable with his own sexuality, like when Toby had finally gotten out of diapers and discovered he could yank on his penis all day long unencumbered by bulky absorbent plastic. Ellie’d reminded Sean that men of an entire generation were in therapy because their mothers told them they’d go blind if they jerked off too much. “And, just so you know,” he went on, “… masturbating is fine. As long as you do it in private, it’s, you know, totally fine.” This conversation would be so much easier if Toby were thirteen or sixteen, or maybe twenty-one. But at this point, his main objective was to walk a fine line. Sean had to send Toby from this conversation knowing it was okay to jerk off and yet not make it sound so appealing that he’d decide it was the best invention ever and that his dad was totally into it.

“So boys do this?” Toby was still trying to wrap his mind around the concept.

“Well … not
only
boys,” he said, before remembering the other crucial part of the death articles:
don’t give too much information
. Why had he felt the need to share that gem?

Toby’s eyes went wide.
“Mom
does that?”

Toby might have been able to deal with all of it up to that moment. But now his little head was spinning. Sean had to backpedal, and yes, maybe even lie. “No,” he said. “No, I didn’t say that.” He hadn’t actually said Ellie
didn’t
masturbate, but he hoped it would be taken that way. “Maybe you ought to get back to bed.”

“But …”

“It’s pretty late.” Sean helped him off the bed and walked him back to his own room. Bedtime was such a useful excuse. What would he do when Toby was too old for bedtime? “We can talk about it more tomorrow if you want.” He would invent better answers in case the subject came up again, but he was banking on the fact that Toby would move on to something more age appropriate like Pokemon or temporary tattoos.

O
N
F
RIDAY
, D
R
. A
LTHERRA UPPED
T
OBY’S DOSE AS PREDICTED
, to two pills twice a day.

“There’s news,” Jess said that afternoon when he called her. “The kids took the ERB today.”

“How’d he do?”

“We won’t get the results for a few weeks,” she said. “But he sat through the whole thing and filled in answers for all the questions.”

“That’s good, right?”

“Yeah.” Her voice was full of energy. “It’s good.”

On Friday, Toby came home with a grin on his face. “I got a gold star.” He held up a piece of sheet music with a sticker on it.

“In recorder?” He hadn’t meant to sound so shocked.

“I know, it’s weird. But I didn’t laugh when Kayla made faces. I forgot to even look at her. And I played “Mary Had A Little Lamb” with only about five mistakes. Or maybe ten.”

Sean stuck the piece of music on the fridge with the Liberace magnet he and Ellie had bought in Las Vegas before they were married.

Later that afternoon, Shineman called him at work. “I wanted to say how pleased I am with Toby’s results,” she said. “You must be thrilled.”

Relieved, cautiously optimistic, worried, maybe. But
thrilled?
“He seems good,” Sean said.

“I was in the classroom today observing Toby,” she said. “He’s definitely heading in the right direction.” Her tone was shifting almost seamlessly into something else. “But I think there’s still room for improvement.”

“But …” She had an uncanny ability to blindside him. “You just said—”

“He’s doing much, much better.” But her tone wasn’t mirroring her news. “When I was in the classroom, though, I noticed he was looking out the window. And he was tapping his foot against the leg of the table. He’s still fidgety. If he can settle down even more, I bet we’ll really see some results,” she said.

“You just said you
did
see results.”

“Calm down, Sean. We’re just having a conversation about Toby’s progress. This is good news. He’s responding very well.”

“Are you saying the other kids don’t look out the window? No one’s looking out the window except Toby?”

“This is what you asked the school to do. To keep an eye out. And Jess and I have been doing that. It’s my professional opinion as an educator and psychologist that I don’t think Toby is getting the maximum benefit from the medication yet.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Call your doctor. Talk it over with her.”

Before he could even hang up, Dr. Altherra was calling to check in. “Are we seeing results yet?” she asked.

He told her about Jess’s report and wondered if she noticed that his voice was shaking. Admitting Toby was responding to the medication was the same as admitting something had been wrong.

“So we’re making progress.” Dr. Altherra sounded happier than he’d heard her. “Is Toby feeling good about it?”

He told her about the gold star.

“We’re getting close. Now we figure out if this is the right dose. This is when I like to send a new Conners scale to the school.”

Gathering more information sounded at least sort of scientific.

“So do I have your permission to send that over today?”

“Okay.” He allowed his shoulders to untense for the first time in weeks. “Sure.”

“M
EETING
!” R
ICK BELLOWED THROUGH THE MOROSE
B
UZZ
offices. “Now!”

The shit had hit the fan. Somehow,
Buzz
missed Owen Wilson shoving his tongue down the throat of a nineteen-year-old model at Liquid. And while stories like that usually constituted a blip on the slime-covered celebrity radar, this affair seemed to have stuck, rendering
Buzz
disastrously behind the other tabs. Ideally, this would be the moment Sean would save the day with a quick call to Gino, who in turn would stalk the star until he or she acted like a moron, looked like shit, stripped naked, or ended up in another compromising position.

But today Gino wasn’t answering. A little research revealed that a run-in with one of Katie Holmes’s bodyguards had laid him up in a fifteen hundred dollar per night room at New York Hospital.

Sean picked up the phone at his desk and put in a call to Lauren Ropa, the photographer who broke the Madonna thing for
Star
last year.

“Let’s go!” Rick was still yelling. Sean joined the staffers who were trudging toward the conference room heavily. He refused to take Rick’s theatrics too seriously, but he seemed to be the only one.

“How the fuck do we turn this around?” Rick’s face was red and the circles under his eyes were darker than Sean had seen them. “Hey, I’m talking to all of you. Wake up!”

“I’ve got Ropa on this thing,” Sean offered.
On it
may have been an overstatement, but it was what Rick needed to hear. “If Owen Wilson so much as brushes the ass of a woman on line at Starbucks, we’ll get it on film.” He knew he should care more about the botched coverage. But he’d gotten an email from Camille that morning telling him the top reviewer from the
Times
was coming to his opening. Things were looking up. Finally.

“My very best clients will be coming,” she had said. “I guarantee the specialty collectors will take home a couple each.”
A couple each
. It was less than a month away.

“What are you smiling about, Benning?” Rick glared at him.

The whole room turned to look at him. “Nothing,” he said, trying to look like he cared. “Not smiling. We’ll fix this, but you’ve got to let us get to work.”

Rick shooed them out with a disgusted wave of his hand.

When Sean got back to his desk, the message light was flashing. He prayed it was Ropa telling him she’d already gotten some money shots. He put the phone on speaker and pressed play.

“Mr. Benning, this is Patty from Bradley,” the voice said. “I’m afraid there’s been a … well, there’s been an accident at school. A serious accident. Toby is at Mount Sinai, and you should go there as soon as you get this message. The address of the hospital is—”

As soon as he heard the word
hospital
, he couldn’t think straight. Somehow, his body went through the motions of getting him out of there fast.
Don’t worry
was what the school always said when they called during the day.
Toby’s fine
. But they hadn’t said that. Patty had used the word
serious
. Sean shoved his arms into his coat as he ran toward the elevator bank and punched the button. For strep or a fever it was a call from the nurse. The school had never told him to go to the hospital. He imagined stitches. Lots of them. A concussion. Broken arm. How long would it take to climb down forty-two flights? He punched the button again.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Rick was still flushed from the meeting.

“Hospital,” he spat out. “School just called, I—”

Rick’s expression softened a little. “What’s a matter? Toby okay?”

He had no idea. “Yeah, I’m sure he’s …” Sean trailed off, not knowing what to hope for, what to imagine. The elevator made a binging sound before it opened. He was already inside and jabbing at the button when Rick told him to go. The doors closed on Rick’s solemn, single-father nod that was supposed to be supportive but instead terrified him.

It was surreal, pulling up to Mount Sinai and pushing through the heavy doors to the pediatric emergency room. The scene was just as chaotic as it had been when he’d come with Calvin, but now every crying child and bloody bandage shot him full of such dread that he thought he might pass out. His eyes darted to the gurneys lining the walls. No Toby.

The attendant pointed Sean to a small room sectioned off by a curtain. Bev Shineman stood in front of it, frowning, waving her cell phone around to find a signal.

“Sean,” she said when she saw him. Her voice was maddeningly calm. “Toby’s unconscious, but he’s stable.”

“Unconscious?” Could he go back and change his wish to a broken arm or stitches? His heart raced as he parted the curtain. Toby lay still on the white sheets, an oxygen tube running into his nose and an IV taped to his left arm. His stomach twisted and he felt lightheaded. This wasn’t happening. This was not the way you were supposed to see your child.

It was cold in the room. Too cold. He reached out to touch Toby, who looked so delicate, so fragile, in his non-sleep. He ran his hand gently through Toby’s hair. “Tobe, buddy. You’re gonna be okay. I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.”

Toby had been alone in the scary cold room. How could they just leave him there like that? He called to Shineman who was still outside the curtain.

She peered in, then stepped over the threshold delicately. “Are you okay? This must be very hard for you.”

“What the hell happened?” He was livid, terrified, helpless. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Let’s wait and talk to the doctor,” Shineman said. “He knows much more than I do.”

“What the hell happened to Toby?” He wasn’t a screamer, but now he couldn’t stop. “Where’s the fucking doctor?”

Fast footsteps stopped outside the room and Jess pulled back the curtain. Her face was red and she was out of breath. “How is he?” she asked.

“Do
you
know what happened?” He was desperate for answers. Why was nobody giving him any?

She nodded and tried to catch her breath. “Mr. Trencher said they were doing a relay race and halfway around the track Toby went down.” She was talking fast and her eyes looked scared.

“Neither of us saw this firsthand,” Shineman interrupted.

Jess kept talking as if Shineman weren’t there. “When he saw Toby shaking and grabbing his chest, he performed CPR and had one of the kids call 911.”

Then it hit him. This was
his
fault. He’d done this. Despite the temperature in the room, he was covered in a panicky sweat.

“I have a hunch we’re very close,” Dr. Altherra had said when she got the new Conners scales. “This is how we do it.”

“Do what?” he’d asked.

“Find the right amount for Toby. We keep going up ’til it hits, slowly and carefully.” And we watch closely to make sure we haven’t gone over. I’ve done this hundreds of times,” she assured him. “Don’t worry.”

Worry was now the tamest emotion he felt. Then he thought: Ellie. He had to call Ellie. She would never forgive him. And she’d be right. His fault. This was all his fault. There was no one else who could share the blame—or the guilt.

He turned to Shineman. “It’s the medication.” He was afraid if he moved, his legs would give out, his body would crumple. “This is just like those stories I read online …” He turned to Jess. “But he seemed fine, right? You said he was fine.” His mind raced as he tried to remember something, anything he might have missed, a clue that Toby wasn’t responding as well as everyone said he was. It didn’t matter. He was Toby’s father, he should have known. Then a wave of nausea washed over him. Because on some level he must have known. And he’d done it anyway. He’d been an idiot, agreeing to raise the dosage, to give him the medication in the first place. What had been the point? To turn Toby into a super-student, some robot that could keep up with the other overachieving children at this Ivy-League factory? When had he decided that Toby’s academic performance was more important than his health? What had he been thinking?

Jess opened her mouth to speak, but Shineman cut her off. “Sean, you should try to calm down.”

“My son is unconscious,” he yelled. “I’m not going to fucking calm down.”

“For Toby’s sake. You’ll talk to the doctor when he comes in, but I don’t believe this could have been caused by the medication. It just doesn’t add up.”

“Where the
hell
is the doctor?” It came out louder than he’d thought it would, but it didn’t feel loud enough. He pulled back the curtain. “We need a doctor in here,” he yelled into the hallway. “Hello?”