To Build a Home

9 | Missed Calls

I can't imagine anything worse than a sick child––confused and powerless and hurting. When I got back to the house, Noah no longer had the energy to walk or hold his head up. His skin was warm and he didn't want to do anything but lie down. No toy could console him. I tried the bear, the elephant, and the helicopter.

He looked at me, with those large blue eyes, lying on the couch, but he couldn't articulate what he was feeling. It broke my heart. I told him he was sick, but that the medicine would make him better in no time. He said, "I want my mommy."

It was the first time he asked for his parents since we had told him they were gone. I tried not to react, although it broke my heart all over again. We had explained that first night in Windber that Phil and Theresa had gotten hurt in an accident and they were in Heaven looking over us. He asked if they could fly, if they could see him when he pooped, and then he asked when they would return.

I think the excitement of Darren and I being around was the only thing that distracted him. It must have felt like a slumber party, getting away with late nights and secret snacks and never any clothes, although we tried to keep things as normal as possible. Anna helped.

"Mommy can't be here," I said, wiping his tears. "But she loves you. Daddy, too." He accepted this as an answer, for now, too tired to debate. I kissed him on his forehead.

I searched the house for children's Tylenol. I knew Theresa would have it, but I didn't know where. It wasn't in the kitchen or the bathroom in the upstairs hallway, so I had to check the master. I tried not to look too closely at anything––pill bottle labels, products, secrets. I found it under the sink in a box marked "Baby." I took the box down to the kitchen for easy access in the event of another emergency.

While Noah napped, I picked up one of the children's books stuck between the couch cushions. I read it out loud even though Noah was already asleep. It followed a puppy, lost and separated from her family, searching for her place in the world. She encountered cats and monkeys and friendly bears and talking hippos, but none of the animals looked like her. A few came close, like the wolf, who growled and ran away when she first appeared, but none were dogs. Then she met the elephant, who was tall and intimidating until she spoke with the tiny and kind voice of a mouse. She said, "You don't have to look like me to be family," and the dog and the cat and the monkey and the bear and the hippo and all of the other animal friends who had tried to help her find her family gathered around. They lived happily ever after and I sobbed my eyes out.

Another hour or so passed and I started straightening the house. I didn't know where anything went, but then I decided it didn't matter. It was up to me now to find places for things. I emptied the utensil drawer and the dinnerware cabinet, swapping this and that, switching the coffee machine and the microwave, stuffing takeout menus into what was once the junk drawer, junk filling up the trash can.

"Ryan!" Darren suddenly burst through the front door, shouting. "Ryan! Where are you?"

"Back here," I called from the kitchen. It looked like a tornado hit. "What's going on?"

When he appeared, he looked around frantically. "Where's Noah?"

"On the couch," I said.

Darren immediately backtracked to the living room to see for himself.

I chased after him. "He's fine, Darren. I gave him Tylenol. The fever's going down."

When I made it to the living room, he was stroking Noah's long blonde hair. I had never seen Darren this way––tense, worried, frantic. Not when Phil broke his leg in the woods behind the football field at the age of ten or when his mother showed up to back-to-school night drunk and wet herself during her introduction at the front of the classroom. He simply carried Phil to the bleachers and then ran for help; he made an excuse for his mother and ushered her to the women's room to clean her up. He always knew what to do, but he didn't look like himself on the couch next Noah.