The Brick Wall

Chapter 24

Collins POV

  The noises started just around ten o'clock.  

  We'd had an uneventful evening.  There was a quiet naptime around three in the afternoon, followed by cooking dinner together, a bath that included baby lavender bubble bath and three stories before Lennox had tucked herself into my chest after her bottle.

  I'd spent the last two hours, since successfully laying her in her crib, cleaning the apartment. It wasn't actually dirty and didn't need it, but I was trying anything possible to wear my body and mind down more so that I may be able to sleep without issue.  I'd debated calling an order for melatonin, but by the time I'd thought about it Lennox was already drinking her last bottle.

  Gathering my items before attempting my own lavender bath, I heard the small squeak.  It was so tiny that I paused all of my movements and even held my breath until I heard it again. This time it was a little louder and coming from the one room it really shouldn't be.  Never should the sound of a barking seal be coming from a baby's room. But as I push open Lennox's door, sure enough she's sitting up, her mouth opening for another bark to escape. 

  I drop my own items onto the floor, ignoring them while I rush to grab up the baby.  Her cheeks are rosy and with one touch of my lips to her forehead I can tell she's got a fever. "Oh, sweet girl. You're not feeling well, are you?"

  You can see in her baby blues just how tired she is, but it's not all from being awoken by the nasty cough.  She's sick, evidence all over her tiny body.  She nuzzles her head right into my neck, trying to breathe in her father's scent from the one item that's become our bedtime ritual, the heat pouring off of her onto myself.  

  In the kitchen I look frantically through all of the cabinets, trying to find some children's Motrin or Tylenol, breathing a tiny sigh of relief as I finally find it in the bathroom medicine cabinet. She and I both take a seat on the floor of the bathroom while I give her the dose between her coughs.  Trying to keep my calm about myself, knowing that if I panic it's only going to increase her discomfort, feels barely natural in the moment because my brain is going ninety to nothing. 

  I think back to when Gage would sound like this, running through all of the remedies my sister in law would try. A lightbulb goes off, among the twenty things fighting for attention in my mind, and I lean over the tub, turning the water on as hot as it'll go before pulling the curtain halfway and turning on the shower. 

  "Steam, Lenny Lou. That's what you need, steam."  I hold my arms open for her and she's automatically lifting her own to meet me.  In one scoop she's back on my chest, her eyes fluttering closed, lips puckered in a pout when I settle us back against the wooden cabinets.  

  This is our position for the next thirty minutes, the room filled with steam and heat, my own body becoming sticky from sweat.  Sweet girl has managed to drift back off to sleep for the last twenty minutes but I can't bring myself to put her back to bed just yet.  But as the steam starts to dissipate, the water having gone cold, I shift to cut the steady stream off.  I can't bear the thought of leaving her alone while she's sick, bypassing the nursery altogether I head for Curtis' bedroom instead. 

  I take up residence at the head of the bed, leaning against the two pillows and onto the headboard so that she can sleep at more of an upright angle.  My own eyes begin to drift close until Lennox coughs out a bark again, this time startling herself awake.  She pushes to sit up from my chest and I hear it when she takes a breath in.

  Stridor.

  Damn it. 

  I may not have children of my own, but my nephew struggled with chronic croup through the time he turned eight.  I know the sound like the back of my hand and if she's making it after a sitting in a steam filled room for over thirty minutes, she needs more help than I can give on my own.