Poisoned by Aime Austin

Author:Aime Austin [Austin, Aime]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781944179748
Publisher: Moore Digital Media, Inc.

Fourteen

Veronica

July 6, 2007

Every moment between breaths, I thought Ivy was going to die.

Still.

Even now.

It was as if I’d gone back ten years. Back to when they’d let us take our first baby home from the hospital; I could barely sleep even though I was already exhausted. It didn’t let up after that first night.

I’d half sit, half lie in the rocker in her room listening to her breathe. Sometimes her tiny chest would stop moving up and down. I’d count the seconds, one…two…three. Then she’d take a deep breath and shift in her swaddle, and I’d release the breath I was holding.

If I could have breathed for her, I would.

If I could have had cancer for her, I would.

“How’s our patient today?” Dr. Mira Ames asked when she bustled into the cold hospital room for Ivy’s first post-surgery exam. I held tight to Stella, who was squirming in my lap. She’d have run across the room and tugged at Dr. Ames’ coat if she could have. My little extrovert was having a hard time not being at the center of the action. When it came to doctors and hospitals, all the focus was on Ivy. I’d had to tell Stella on more than one occasion that she would not grow up and go to the hospital one day. That hospitals weren’t a phase somewhere between losing your first tooth and learning to ride a bike.

Fingers crossed.

I’d really wanted to drop my littlest one off at day care. I’d actually asked Tino, but he’d been out the door at the crack of dawn. I couldn’t do two things, drop Stella off and get Ivy to the hospital on time for her first post-surgery appointment. Obviously, I’d chosen the most important. I prayed to God that Stella forgave me for putting Ivy first more often than not.

I looked between the young woman in the white lab coat and Ivy ready to jump in and respond. It was too bad Ivy didn’t have half of Stella’s gumption.

“Good,” Ivy finally answered. She took a deep breath as if that one word had taken all her strength. Then she spoke again. “Tired.”

Tired was just the tip of the iceberg. She’d been mostly sipping soup and sleeping. She’d barely stayed awake in the car ride on the way over. Dark circles lay against skin paler than I’d ever seen it. I’m not sure why I expected her to bounce back so quickly. Nothing on the reams of paper about post-surgery care had suggested a quick recovery. Every estimate was twelve weeks at best. Yet, I’d expected her to wake up and start jumping on the trampoline outside like she used to when we’d bought it for her sixth birthday as stand-in for the attention we couldn’t give her with a new baby in the mix.

“That’s not going to change for a while.” Dr. Ames’ voice was soft, careful. When she became a more senior doctor, I thought she’d be a good one. Her calm and soothing manner was so different from the others who’d worked on Ivy.

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