Turn Up the Sun by Tyler Jones

Author:Tyler Jones [Jones, Tyler]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dark Room Press
Published: 2024-02-05T00:00:00+00:00

5

Becca waited until after 9 P.M., when she knew Damien would have already put Kelly down for the night. She pictured the girl’s sweet, chubby face, her toothless smile, the soft, downy feel of the hair just finally starting to grow in on her head and felt something uncomfortably close to guilt.

She deserved parents who loved each other, and as Becca thought about her husband something occurred to her. She knew Damien loved her, unreservedly. Whatever she wanted from him, he’d give without hesitation. But she didn’t feel the same way about him.

I love him, of course I love him.

She gathered her laptop and slipped it in her bag, then took a drink of water and popped two ibuprofens to halt the headache that was coming on. She picked up her cellphone to check the time and saw a picture of her own small family. Taken only a few weeks earlier at the birthday party of a friend’s child. Damien actually looked good dressed in a polo shirt and shorts. Becca wore a patterned, sleeveless dress, her long hair cascading over one shoulder. Damien held Kelly, had been bouncing her up and down to illicit a drooly smile, and then the photo was snapped.

A family portrait.

Damien and Kelly appeared genuinely happy, captured in a moment of joy. Becca though, looked disconnected from their happiness. She smiled, but it was the rehearsed smile of someone aware a picture was being taken. The two people next to her were lost in each other, in a moment outside the camera’s eye.

She couldn’t look at Damien without thinking of what he should do, what he wasn’t doing, and how it affected her. Everything she thought and felt about him was through a lens of a self.

Is that love?

The ring of the office phone startled her and set her heart racing. It rang again, a shrill electronic bell that sounded even louder in the silent room.

The caller ID showed a series of asterisks instead of a number. The clinic operated as a primary physician’s office as well as an urgent care, so it wasn’t surprising that some desperate parent would try and call afterhours, either needing advice or a prescription.

The phone rang again, and Becca felt the noise in her teeth.

She imagined a harried mother on the other end as her child lay beside her, soaked in fever sweat. She probably looked up the website, saw “urgent care” and decided to call.

Another ring.

Becca picked up the receiver, held it to her, and said, “Hello?”

Before she even got the word out of her mouth, she knew something was wrong.

Breathing on the other end. But not normal breathing. The high-pitched wheeze, like wind through a cracked window, of someone gasping for breath with a swollen airway.

“Can you hear me?” Becca said. “This is Dr. Becca Huntley at the Pediatric Associates Clinic. Do you need help?”

The breathing continued. So loud and so close that it distorted through the speaker. Each breath raspy. Air being let out of a balloon.

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