“I have to.” Still scratching, he stopped walking so he could look up at the sky, turning in circles to see all around. “Shouldn’t there be some clouds? There’s usually clouds.”
“We don’t have time to talk about the weather, Chris.”
“But shouldn’t—”
“Chris!”
Minutes after the last bell, they arrived at the school’s front entrance. She watched him go through, looking grumpy even from the back. The sight made her ache. Wasn’t five supposed to be a happy age?
“IT’S FUNGUS,” said the woman in the first bed. “That’s what I heard. You slap ’em and you drive this fungus they carry right into your bloodstream. Like a poison dart. And that’s it. There’s nothing anybody can do for you.”
Gwyn stood holding a lunch tray and wishing she hadn’t mentioned Chris’s discomfort. She’d arrived at the hospital half an hour late, overheated and flustered from hurrying, and found herself explaining why to everyone she saw.
“You don’t even need fungus,” the woman’s roommate added. “Any old infection will do the job. My cousin had a mosquito bite that he would not leave alone. Next thing we know a red line goes snaking up his arm from the bite. And it just keeps going. Up to his elbow. Up to his shoulder. It gets to his heart and—” she slapped her hands together sharply “—that was it. He keeled over right in front of me.” She nodded at Gwyn. “But don’t you worry about your boy. Things are different now.”
“You want to put oatmeal in his bath,” the first woman advised. “That’ll take care of it.”
“Thanks for the tip.” Maybe an antibiotic cream would be a good idea, too.
She slid the tray into place on the meal cart and went into the next room. A smiling, fully dressed man sat in the armchair beside an empty bed.
“There you are!” he said. “All the nurses were worried about you.”
“You’re exaggerating, Mr. Scott.”
“Having trouble with your son?”
Gwyn wished she could tell him about Chris’s ice age fears. It wasn’t that Mr. Scott knew about science. He’d worked in the Grill Room bakery at Eaton’s from his high school graduation until the store closed. It wasn’t even that he knew about children. He and his wife didn’t have a family. Maybe she just wanted to complain to someone about David Whoever. She couldn’t use a senior citizen with a heart condition for that.
“We live near the river so we have lots of mosquitoes,” she said. “Poor kid’s one big bite.”
“I remember what that was like.” Mr. Scott sounded nostalgic. “You get out with your chums and you don’t even notice the darn things until you’re home and want to go to sleep. My mother used to soak cloths in baking soda and water and spread them on my skin. Cool water, that’s the ticket.”
“I’ll try it. Thanks.” Gwyn picked up her lunch tray. “All ready to go?”
“Yup, they’re cutting me loose. I’ll miss you.”
“I bet you won’t.” A bowl of pudding sat untouched beside his plate. “Want to keep that for later? You never know how long you’ll wait to get signed out.”
“They won’t let me.”
It was true the kitchen liked having all the dishes returned at the same time. Mr. Scott’s diet didn’t allow many treats, though. Gwyn left the bowl and spoon on his over-bed table, put a finger to her lips and carried his tray out of the room.
In the corridor she almost barreled into the head nurse. Mrs. Byrd always looked stern, whether or not she was feeling that way, so it alarmed anyone with a guilty conscience to find her on their heels. It was just once, Gwyn thought, just half an hour.
“Trouble at home today?”
“I’m sorry. We took too long getting ourselves organized.”
“Could you have called?”
It had seemed like one more thing to do, a few more minutes between herself and the bus. “I guess I hoped to get here on time.”
Mrs. Byrd still looked stern, but not necessarily disapproving. Gwyn felt a familiar anxiety, an eagerness to please that made her feel eight years old. For years, with the School of Nursing’s traditional pleated cap on her head, its gold pin over her breast and the hospital’s crest on her sleeve Mrs. Byrd had been the closest thing to her mother Gwyn could see. It gave her feelings of fondness for the woman that made no sense otherwise.
“I’ll need you to make up the half hour you missed. There’s plenty for you to do after your regular work. You can read to Mrs. Wilton and the shelves in the supply room should be straightened up.” Mrs. Byrd walked away without waiting for an answer.
Gwyn rolled her head back and forth and dug her fingertips into the knotted muscle in her neck. She wouldn’t be home before Chris and this was Mrs. Henderson’s afternoon for aquacize. During her coffee break she’d need to make some calls.
IT WAS ONE OF THOSE rules that everything happened all at once in hospitals. Just as Gwyn was about to leave the ward Mr. Scott was discharged, three patients were admitted and another went into respiratory arrest. In between helping people into gowns and rushing samples to the lab she called the kindergarten mom who had agreed to pick up Chris, found out she was about to leave for a soccer game and, now that Iris was back from work, arranged for him to go there instead.
Almost two hours late she finally got home. There was no fence between her yard and Iris’s so as soon as Gwyn walked up her sidewalk she saw Chris and Molly playing. They lay on the grass reaching for each other, right arms outstretched, fingertips barely touching. Chris clutched long cardboard rolls under his left arm. When she got closer she heard them half gasping, half shouting.
“I’ve got you!” Molly said desperately.
“Take the samples!”
“Throw them here!”
“Ahhh!” Chris rolled away, his voice fading, the cardboard tubes flying into the air.
Iris appeared at the door. “Long day? Come have a cold drink.”
“I’m so sorry about this. Thanks for looking out for Chris.” Gwyn followed Iris inside. When she looked out the kitchen window the children were on their stomachs again, but their roles were reversed.
Iris handed her a glass of lemonade. “They’re playing The Day After Tomorrow.”
“Shoot.” The mild word didn’t feel like enough to say. She repeated it, with feeling.
Iris took a cigarette from a nearly full box. “The ground is cracking apart, they tell me, and they take turns being the guy with the ice core samples who’s about to fall to his death.”
Maybe acting it out was a good thing. Chris could make it a game. He seemed happier now than he had trudging into school.
“Don’t look so worried. Didn’t you ever play Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?”
Gwyn smiled, feeling a little sheepish and nostalgic. “National Velvet. I trotted everywhere and jumped over things.”
“Now that’s a picture I’m going to hang on to.”
“But our kids are playing The End of the World.”
“No, no,” Iris said lightly. “Just the end of the world as we know it.” She lit her cigarette, smelled the smoke appreciatively, then put it out.
“Think I should quit my job?”
“No, I don’t. What brought that on?”
She only worked part-time. Maybe subtracting her small paycheck wouldn’t