Although Ada had offered to take him home, he’d refused, especially while Maisie had a death grip on his hand. They never could stand to be separated for long. I ran my fingers over his blond hair, the same nearly white shade as Maisie’s. How similar their features looked. How different their little souls were.
A soft click sounded as the door opened only enough for a doctor to poke his head in.
“Mrs. MacKenzie?”
I put up one finger, and the doctor nodded, backing away and closing the door softly.
As quietly as I could, I moved Colt off my lap, replacing my warmth with a pillow and my jacket over his little body.
“Is it time to go?” he asked, snuggling deeper into the couch.
“No, bud. I need to talk to the doctor. You stay here and watch over Maisie, okay?”
Slowly, glazed-over blue eyes opened to meet mine. He was still more than half asleep.
“I’ve got this.”
“I know you do.” I grazed his temple with my fingers.
With sure steps and very unsure fingers, I got the door open and shut behind me without waking Maisie.
“Mrs. MacKenzie?”
I scanned the guy’s badge. Doctor Taylor.
“Actually, I’m not married.”
He blinked rapidly and then nodded. “Right. Of course. My apologies.”
“What do you know?” I pulled the sides of my sweater together, like the wool could function as some kind of armor.
“Let’s go down the hall. The nurses are right here, so the kids are fine,” he assured me, already leading me to a glass-walled area that looked to serve as a conference room.
There were two other doctors waiting.
Doctor Taylor pointed me to a seat, and I took it. The men in the room looked serious, their smiles not reaching their eyes, and the guy on the right couldn’t seem to stop clicking his pen.
“So, Ms. MacKenzie,” Doctor Taylor began. “We ran some blood tests on Margaret, as well as drained some fluid from her hip earlier, where we found infection.”
I shifted in my seat. Infection…that was easy.
“So antibiotics?”
“Not exactly.” Doctor Taylor’s eyes shot up toward the door, and I glanced over to see a woman in her midforties leaning against the doorframe. She was classically beautiful, her dark skin as flawless as her French twist updo. I was suddenly very aware of my state of dishevelment but managed to keep my hands off my no-longer-cute messy bun.
“Dr. Hughes?”
“Just observing. I saw the girl’s chart when I came on shift.”
Dr. Taylor nodded, took a deep breath, and turned his attention back to me.
“Okay, if she has an infection in her hip, that would explain the leg pain and the fever, right?” I folded my arms across my stomach.
“It could, yes. But we’ve found an anomaly in her blood work. Her white counts are alarmingly elevated.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, this is Dr. Branson, and he’s from ortho. He’ll help us with Margaret’s hip. And this…” Dr. Taylor swallowed. “This is Dr. Anderson. He’s from oncology.”
Oncology?
My gaze swung to meet the aging doctor’s, but my mouth wouldn’t open. Not until he said the words his specialty had been called in for.
“Ms. MacKenzie, your daughter’s tests indicate that she may have leukemia…”
His mouth continued to move. I saw it take shape, watched the animations of his facial features, but I didn’t hear anything. It was like he’d turned into Charlie Brown’s teacher and everything was coming through a filter of a million gallons of water.
And I was drowning.
Leukemia. Cancer.
“Stop. Wait.” I put my hands out. “I’ve had her at the pediatrician at least three times in the last six weeks. They told me there was nothing, and now you’re saying it’s leukemia? That’s not possible! I did everything.”
“I know. Your pediatrician didn’t know what to look for, and we’re not even certain it is leukemia. We’ll need to take a bone marrow sample to confirm or rule it out.”
Which doctor said that? Branson? No, he was ortho, right?
It was the cancer doctor. Because my baby needed to be tested for cancer. She was just down the hall and had no clue that a group of people were sentencing her to hell for a crime she’d never committed. Colt… God, what was I going to tell him?
I felt a hand squeeze mine and looked over, my head on autopilot, to see Dr. Hughes in the seat next to me. “Can we call someone? Maybe Maisie’s dad? Your family?”
Maisie’s dad had never so much as bothered to see her.