The Winters in Bloom (14 page)

“That’s good, then.” He squeezed her hand in an absent-minded way. “Don’t worry.”

Before she could say anything else, he’d gone back to the article. He was scheduled to give a report on the conference to his department the next morning. He also had two classes to teach tomorrow. Of course he wanted to get back.

She turned Michael around in her lap so she could look at his eyes again. They weren’t watering or red, but they looked, well, glassy. It was the only word that described her little boy’s weird, faraway stare. It was almost as if he couldn’t focus his eyes. She wondered if this was the first sign that he needed glasses. Maybe it was something simple like that.

When they boarded the plane, Michael insisted on walking himself to his seat. Kyra was relieved, though he still kept his hand clutched in hers. The first hour of the flight was notable only for how quiet her little boy was. He was watching a
Sesame Street
video, but he didn’t try to sing along or point at Elmo the way he usually did. His whole face seemed to have that faraway look. By the time the video was over, he was shivering.

“Are you cold, sweetie?” Kyra said. He nodded and she got out his favorite blanket from the diaper bag. She put it on his legs, but her hand went to his forehead. Normally, she went straight to the thermometer without bothering with the forehead test because Michael’s fevers were always relatively low: 99.5, 100.3. But he wasn’t usually shivering like this, either.

He was burning up.

“David,” she said. “He needs Tylenol.”

He dropped his article and reached for the diaper bag. In the meantime, she unhooked Michael’s seat belt and leaned over to pick up her sick baby. He felt like a dead weight in her arms. His breaths were coming twice as quickly as usual and he was whimpering.

They managed to get the Tylenol drops down the little boy’s throat, and Kyra held him and waited for the drug to work to bring his fever down. After a half hour or so, it had helped; he no longer felt warm when she touched him. But he wouldn’t smile; he didn’t even look at the pages as David read his favorite book about trains and trucks. He kept his eyes shut and his face burrowed into her shoulder, as if the cabin lights were bothering him.

When he finally fell asleep, Kyra closed her eyes, too. She wanted to rest just for a minute, but almost an hour and a half went by before she woke up when Michael vomited down the front of both of their shirts.

David handed her a wet wipe, but she didn’t have time to wipe herself off before Michael vomited again. He hadn’t eaten much all morning, but now that he’d started vomiting, he couldn’t seem to stop dry-heaving. The people in the row next to them gave concerned looks, but no one knew what to do for the little boy, including the flight attendant who came by to see if they needed anything. The first time they told her no, but the second time, about fifteen minutes later, David said, “I think he needs a doctor.”

“Sir,” she said, “I know it’s rough being on a long flight with a sick little guy, but it’s going to be all right.” She smiled sympathetically.

Kyra tried to move Michael over a little, to take the pressure off her left arm, and he let out an awful scream. “I’m so sorry, baby,” she whispered. Her eyes were burning with tears.

“He needs help,” David said to the flight attendant. When she didn’t move, he said, “Now!”

A moment later, they heard the announcement, “If there is a doctor on board please make yourself known to the cabin staff.” The only doctor on the plane was a psychiatrist in his seventies, but he remembered enough of his medical school training to recognize that Michael was very sick. When the old man lifted up the little boy’s green and white shirt, there was a rash that hadn’t been there before, a rash that had developed in minutes. Kyra felt her body go numb when the doctor said the horrible word:
meningitis.

What happened after that would always be a blur. Somehow they got through the next few hours as the aircraft moved over the ocean. When the plane landed, an ambulance was waiting on the tarmac. The next thing Kyra knew, they were at the hospital, and Michael was in the ICU, in a coma. The doctor in charge told them it was unlikely that he would live through the night.

She remembered sitting on a hard plastic chair, sobbing into her hands. But where was David? He was there, of course he was, but she had no memories of him trying to comfort her or letting her comfort him. She didn’t remember them ever holding hands or putting their arms around each other. And he never cried at all; she was certain of this, because it surprised her even at the time.

Michael survived the night, but the next morning, the doctor told them their baby still might die; it was only less likely than before. And even if he didn’t, he might have to have his legs amputated. He might have brain damage. He might have permanent hearing loss. He might be blind. The list of possibilities was terrible, but Kyra focused all her prayers on the only thing that mattered. As long as he was alive, she could keep going.

She had no idea if David prayed. She didn’t remember seeing him in the hospital chapel. She didn’t remember him being there when the priest knelt down with her in Michael’s room to say prayers to the Virgin Mary. Her mother-in-law was kneeling on the other side of the priest. Sandra was always there, bringing her coffee and food and lotion for her hands, which were so dry they were bleeding. The hospital had lotion, but Sandra said hers was better. Kyra remembered sitting in a chair while her mother-in-law patted the lavender-smelling lotion onto her knuckles and palms. Neither of them spoke. Michael had had a seizure that afternoon. The doctors had done a scan and said he did not have brain damage. Yet.

Where was David? Why wasn’t he part of this memory? Even the night when Michael turned a corner, it was Sandra who she remembered being with her, not her husband. Though it was almost three in the morning, after the doctor told them the good news, the two women began to giggle like girls. They didn’t want to wake up Michael—now that he could be woken up like a normal little boy—so they went into the deserted relatives’ lounge, where Kyra finally agreed to let Sandra comb out her long hair. It was a tangled mess after days of living at the hospital, but Sandra was so gentle. At some point, Kyra blurted out, “I wish you were my mom,” but she forced a laugh.

“Your wish is granted.” Sandra laughed, too, and touched Kyra’s forehead with the comb, like it was a magic wand. Then she looked into Kyra’s eyes, which had filled with tears. “Aw, sweetheart.” She put her arms around Kyra. “I am your mom.”

“She is,” David said, smiling. “With all the rights and privileges attaching thereto.”

And just like that, her husband came into focus, sitting on the overstuffed chair on the other side of the lounge. Had he been there all along? That was the part she would never be sure of.

In the months that followed, whenever they talked about the hospital—not often, and always in language so vague that no one who wasn’t with them could have known what they were referring to, calling it “what happened with Michael,” or just “that November”—Kyra listened carefully to what her husband remembered, looking for points of intersection, places where he
should
have been in her own memories. But she didn’t admit that she couldn’t see him. She was afraid of what it might mean about her marriage, especially as David seemed to have changed so drastically since that flight home from London.

If only he had talked to her about what he was going through. Instead, he focused all his attention on making sure nothing like this ever happened again. He bought and read books about childhood diseases that were dense and difficult, intended for pediatricians. He learned the signs of all kinds of illnesses, and he taught Kyra what to look for, too. It was David who figured out that Michael was allergic to mold spores, and David who decided Michael was also allergic to dust mites—after the mold remediation contractor had spent months tearing open the walls of their house and Michael was still sneezing. They hired someone to clean every week, and David or Kyra vacuumed Michael’s room every day. As David always said, “We have to be on the safe side.”

Part of Kyra knew that the
safe side
was a chimera, like the pot at the end of a rainbow, but she didn’t argue with her husband. She was afraid, too, now that she understood just how fragile her family’s happiness was. Michael had completely recovered, yet it felt like a great chasm still separated her from David. Gone were the days when they would broil steaks and do logic puzzles. They had more time now that Michael was older and a better sleeper, but they’d lost the inclination to do anything together other than work harder, ever harder, to protect their precious little son.

Part Two

TWELVE

I
t was
the middle of the afternoon, and Michael had a big mosquito bite on his elbow, but he was still happy to be on the boat. For the last few minutes, he and April had been on the lower deck, in line at the concession stand. April was the lady’s name, or at least she’d told Michael to call her that, “like the month.” They were about to order hot dogs, which Michael was excited about, though he hoped they were the healthy kind: turkey or chicken or at least all beef. He’d already told her he didn’t want French fries. He loved how they tasted, but he’d heard his father say that fried food is
a heart attack waiting to happen.

Now that he’d been with the lady for a few hours, he’d had time to daydream about what it would be like when he got home. He was proud that he could tell his parents that he’d held April’s hand and sometimes the rail, too, that he hadn’t had any drinks with caffeine or sugar, that he’d tried not to scratch his mosquito bite because he remembered it could get infected if he scratched, that he hadn’t talked to strangers or forgotten to wash his hands in the bathroom or eaten (much) unhealthy food. He’d even let April take his picture after she’d told him that her camera wasn’t the digital kind but old and really special: you could hold the photo in your hand and watch it come to life. He liked watching the pictures develop so much that by the time April gave her camera to a white-haired lady, to take a photo of the two of them, he smiled right on cue. April’s cheeks looked pink in the picture, but his didn’t. It was another thing he could tell his parents: that he’d insisted on wearing sunscreen, though April had had to buy it on the boat where it cost twice what it would have cost on land. But she said it was okay. “I don’t want you to get burned,” she said, and smiled. Then she said under her breath, “I should have thought of this earlier.” But Michael told her everybody forgets something. “Even my daddy,” he said. “And Mommy says he has the memory of an elephant.”

While he was eating his hot dog (so yummy, but unfortunately not the healthy kind), April was asking him questions about his mom. She was sucking on a mint; she had thrown her hot dog away after one bite. Where does your mom work? What does she do there? Does she like music? What songs does she listen to? Michael answered them all as well as he could. He knew the name of his mom’s company, but all he knew was she did something with math. “She really likes numbers,” he said. “Four is her favorite, just like Big Bird’s.” He was about to tell April that Big Bird had a song about four, but then April started humming it. He thought the song was too young for him, but still, he couldn’t resist chiming in when April got to the chorus: “I just adore four; the number—one-two-three—for me!” But afterward, he clarified, “I really like six better.”

April smiled. “I think I know why. You have a birthday coming up soon, don’t you?”

He thought nobody in the world knew about his birthday except his family. His birthday was in the summer, which meant you never got to bring cupcakes to school and celebrate—and he didn’t have a school anymore anyway.

“It’s June twenty-third, isn’t it?” She smiled and handed him a napkin. “And you’ll be six.”

His hot dog was long gone, but April was pointing at his upper lip. He wiped it with the napkin and handed it back to her. He could feel himself grinning.

“Let’s think of today as an early celebration. We can do whatever you want now.”

She stood up, and they started walking toward the ramp. The boat had just docked, and everyone was rushing off, but April said they were in no hurry.

Michael was thinking. There were so many other places he wanted to go: how could he pick just one? But then he remembered a kid at his second kindergarten saying that Six Flags in New Jersey had a giant Ferris wheel. One of Michael’s books had a Ferris wheel on the cover. He loved the idea of a wheel that could take him so far up that he would feel like he was part of the sky. But when he’d asked his parents if he could go, his father said it wasn’t a good idea: the Ferris wheel might break, or, more likely, Michael would pick up a germ from all those children standing in line, some of them sick, no doubt, with parents who were too irresponsible to realize that their sick child could infect hundreds of other kids.

He didn’t want to get sick. Plus, shouldn’t he be going home soon? The sun was still way up in the sky, but the light looked sort of yellow-orange, which his mom always said was a sign the sun was getting tired. He didn’t want his parents to get so worried they would decide this day had been a mistake. But on the other hand, in case they did decide that, he should do everything he could now, while he still had the chance.

“If you want to go back home,” April said slowly.