Chapter 9: Juice in a Purple Cup
Rachel was through the hospital doors before Cole had finished parking.
She took the stairs.
She did not wait for the elevator.
She went up two floors at a pace that was not quite running and came through the door to the pediatric ward and walked the length of it to the room at the end.
Denise was outside the door.
She stepped aside without a word and her face said everything that needed saying.
Rachel went in.
Emma was sitting up.
Not fully — the bed was raised and she was leaning against the pillow and she looked small and pale and tired in the way children look when they have been somewhere their bodies were not meant to go.
But her eyes were open.
They were the same eyes.
They found Rachel immediately.
"Mummy."
Rachel crossed the room.
She sat on the edge of the bed and put both arms around her daughter very carefully, mindful of the bandage, mindful of the monitor lead, mindful of everything — and then Emma's arms came up and held on and Rachel stopped being mindful of anything except that.
She did not cry.
She had decided she would not cry in front of Emma.
She breathed instead, slowly, her face against Emma's hair, and she counted the breaths the way she had counted Emma's name in Naomi's notepad.
"I'm here," she said.
"I know," Emma said.
"I heard you before."
Rachel pulled back to look at her face.
"You heard me?"
"You said you weren't going anywhere." Emma considered this with the gravity of a four-year-old delivering a verdict.
"I knew that already."
Rachel looked at her daughter's face for a long moment.
"Are you in pain?"
"My head hurts a little bit."
"I know.
The doctors are going to help with that."
"Okay." Emma looked around the room.
"Can I have juice?"
A sound came out of Rachel that was somewhere between a laugh and something that was not a laugh at all.
"Yes," she said.
"Yes, you can have juice."
She looked at the nurse who had appeared in the doorway.
The nurse nodded and disappeared.
Emma settled back against the pillow.
She looked at Rachel with the direct, unhurried attention children give to things they find important.
"Are you sad?"
"A little bit," Rachel said.
"But mostly I'm very happy to see you."
"Because I woke up?"
"Because you woke up."
Emma seemed to accept this.
She reached out and took Rachel's hand.
Her grip was stronger than it had any right to be after the morning she'd had, and Rachel held on.
The nurse came back with a small cup of apple juice — not purple, not the right cup — and Emma looked at it and looked at Rachel.
"That's not my cup."
"I know," Rachel said.
"Your cup is at home.
This one is just for today."
Emma examined the cup with great seriousness.
"Does it have a name?"
"It can have whatever name you like."
Emma thought about this.
"Gerald," she said.
"Gerald it is."
Emma drank her juice from Gerald the hospital cup, and Rachel sat beside her and held her hand, and the monitor kept its rhythm, and the afternoon light came through the window at a low angle and lay across the blanket in a long pale stripe.
Denise came in after a few minutes and stood near the door.
She looked at Emma and then at Rachel and the professional expression was still there but there was something else underneath it, something that had been there all day and that Rachel was only now naming.
"Thank you," Rachel said again.
"You already thanked me," Denise said.
"I'm doing it again."
Denise smiled.
It was a small smile, the kind that belongs to people who do difficult work and find their reward in moments like this one.
"She's going to need rest.
The neurologist will be back in an hour."
"I'll be here."
"I know you will." Denise looked at Emma.
"Hello, Emma."
Emma looked up from Gerald.
"Hello."
"I'm Denise.
I've been helping your mum today."
Emma considered her.
"Are you a doctor?"
"No.
I'm a social worker."
"What's that?"
"It means I help families when things get hard."
Emma thought about this.
"Things got hard today," she said.
"They did," Denise said.
"But your mum handled it."
Emma looked at Rachel with an expression of complete unsurprise.
"She always does," she said.
Rachel looked at the ceiling for one second.
Then she looked back at her daughter.
Outside the room, she knew, there were charges being filed and statements being recorded and a letter sitting in an evidence bag and a forensic accountant being contacted about four hundred thousand dollars and a man in custody who had used a false name to walk into the building where her daughter was sleeping.
All of that was real.
All of that still had to be faced.
May you like
But right now Emma was awake and drinking juice from a cup named Gerald, and Rachel was holding her hand, and that was the only thing that was required of her in this moment.
She stayed.
