Set after At Christmas, the holiday novella I wrote a few years ago.

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1
I said remember this moment
In the back of my mind

The room was quiet, with the occasional sound of beeps from the machine next to the bed. The beeps were a comfort, just like the dips and rises on the monitor. Even. Predictable. Boring. The man in the bed was pale, but not so different than the day he’d been checked in. He didn’t wear the checked patient gown, but his own satin blue pyjamas. How many times had she woke in the morning, turned to find him looking just like this?

How many years had they wasted with pride and arrogance and sheer stupidity?

The beat on the monitor picked up again, and she looked at it, her breath caught for a moment, her eyes like a hawk, waiting for the irregular pace to even out, to relax — not another arrhymia, no, not now—

She didn’t take another breath, not until the beat had slowed again, didn’t look away from the monitor until the dips and rises were normal—so she didn’t know he was awake until there was the gentlest squeeze on her hand, the paper-thin, rust of his voice.

“Monica.”

She whipped her eyes from the machine to her husband in the bed, squeezed his hand. “Alan, you need to rest. You need to—”

“You’re…not the only doctor in this room,” Alan told her, then smiled to take the sting from his words — just the slightest lift from the corners of his lips. “The…kids. They’ll know. I…” He closed his eyes, licked his lips. “They’ll know,” he repeated. “It’s…Friday. And tomorrow…”

“I know.” Monica looked at his hands, at the lines of age winding across from knuckles to wrist. “We’ve become so boring in our old age, haven’t we? The weekly family dinner, the house full of children and grandchildren—” Her voice caught, the final word pulled back and trapped in her throat. “You…you can’t give up. We have so much still to look forward to. Our babies—”

“Not giving up.” He looked at her again, warmth in his beloved eyes. “Holding on to every minute. I…waited too long to start our family. To pay attention. Foolish.”

“Alan.”

“They need to know. I need…I need to see them. Monica. It’s time to tell them.”

2
The time we stood with our shaking hands
The crowds in stands went wild

“It’s just a cold, it’s just a cold.” Elizabeth wrapped her arms around her torso, watching the pediatrician listen to her son’s lungs, sliding the end of the stethoscope from his back to the front, to the heart. She looked at her husband. “Just a cold.”

“It’s just a cold,” Jason told her, but his tone was tense, fear sliding beneath it. Every bump, bruise, sniffle, and cough since the moment Cameron had been born was the center of anxiety, the cause of fast breathing, pulse racing, thoughts flying through every piece of literature they’d read in the last five years.

“It is just a cold,” Dr. Hudson told them, looping the scope around his neck, with his usual calm smile. He was used to this by now, having guided Cameron from the day he’d left the NICU.  “Why don’t we let Cameron sit in here with one of our nurses and we can have a conversation about what to do next.”

Once they had left the examining room and gone across the hall, the doctor behind his desk, Jason and Elizabeth seated across from him. “I don’t like the wheezing I’m hearing,” he added. “This is his second cold in the last six months, and the last one lingered—”

“Two weeks after the rest of the symptoms,” Elizabeth added.

“And after the x-rays were clear,” Jason finished, almost on top of each other. He rubbed her shoulder, and she flashed him a tight-lipped smile. “You said—”

“That it happens sometimes, but this is the second time,” Dr. Hudson repeated. “It’s normal for a child of Cameron’s age, with his medical history.  He’s made extraordinary progress—you said kindergarten was going well?”

“He’s—we read to him every night. A-and he started reading to us, and his teacher said he’s quick and bright and loves to answer questions and volunteer—”

“But he’s been having trouble with speech,” Jason said, and Elizabeth stopped, pressed her lips together. “With forming the, uh, s sound, his teacher said. We’ve got an appointment next week with a speech therapist—”

“He gets frustrated,” Elizabeth admitted, then swiped at the errant tear that escaped her eyes, then took a deep breath. “When he has the answer, but he can’t make himself be understood because of the lisp—”

The doctor made a few notes. “All right, I think we’ve got a few pieces to consider. Let’s remember the big picture, all right? Considering his premature birth at thirty-two weeks, the emphysema he experienced, the delayed development of his lungs, Cameron checks a lot of boxes for the average five-year-old. His height and weight are in the normal range, and if his only major academic problem is a lisp — children born completely health experience those.”

“But the breathing—”

“I want to monitor him more closely,” Dr. Hudson said. “We’ll try a nebulizer treatment and albuterol. I want to hold off on pulmonary function testing as long as we can. Even with a cooperative child, it can be difficult—”

“I remember,” Elizabeth said, fisting her hands in her lap. “I still have mine every six months, and I —” she looked at Jason. “I can’t put Cameron through that. Not yet.”

“Of course. Let me write the prescription, and we’ll get you out of here.”

3
We were the kings and the queens
And they read off our names

When Cameron had been born, he’d barely weighed four pounds. He’d gained weight in the last five years, of course, but every time Jason lifted his son, he thought about those first few weeks, how the swaddling blanket had felt more substantial.

He tried not to compare him to other children — the slightly older Morgan who was almost a head taller and fifteen pounds heavier. To the way Michael had felt at this age—

Or even to his much younger cousin, Spencer, who was barely two years old and almost as tall as Cameron.

“Tired,” Cameron said, looping an arm around his father’s neck, laying his head against Jason’s shoulder, his messy brown curls tickling the skin at Jason’s collarbone. Jason rubbed his son’s back, stroking up, then down, feeling the slight whisper of breath, the whistling wheeze that followed.

They left the pediatric wing, moving towards the center of the hospital floor, Elizabeth at his side with a phone to her ear, trying to rearrange the rest of her afternoon schedule, an arm wrapped tightly around her midsection, her skin pale.

It hadn’t been terrible news, or even bad. Cameron was fine. He’d need some extra help recovering from his colds or other respiratory illnesses, a side effect they’d been ready to handle for years. But they’d just had the meeting with the preschool teacher last week—

But it was pulmonary testing that had put Elizabeth on edge, Jason knew that. They’d go days and weeks and even months without thinking about the illness that had stolen their world for almost a year, that had almost cost her life, the final remnant and reminder of Ric Lansing — the ghost that lived at the edge of their entire existence. Every time Monica’s office reached out to schedule the biannual testing to ensure that there were no more clots or to catch them quickly, it was there again. Impossible to forget.

The idea that their son might have also inherited some of that dark legacy—

They reached the elevators just as Elizabeth finished her phone call, her expression pinched. “I can’t reschedule my last patient,” she told him with a sigh. “I just—I can’t.”

“I can handle it,” he told her. “I’ll get Jake from daycare, and we’ll see you at home. Don’t worry—” The phone in his jeans vibrated, and he grimaced. “My phone—can you see who it is?” If it were Justus or Bernie, he’d have to handle it faster, but—

Elizabeth fished the phone from his pocket, then flipped it over to read the notification screen. “It’s your mom. I can—we could tell her. She’d probably know exactly how to give the treatment—not that you can’t—”

“But she’s your doctor, okay. Answer it.” They stepped on the elevator, and Elizabeth pressed the button for the second floor where the family counseling officers were located, then flipped the phone up to her ear.

“Hey, Monica. I’m so glad you called—” Elizabeth stopped so abruptly, that Jason turned to look at her. She met his eyes, and he read the worry in her expression. “Okay. We’ll—We’ll be there.”

“What’s going on?”

Still gripping the phone, she pressed the button for the tenth floor. He frowned — that was the surgical floor, and— “What’s going on?” he repeated.

“Your dad’s in the ICU. We—we need to meet her up there.”