Long Time Running - By Hannah Foster Page 0,52

for her choice was painfully clear.

"Why don't you pack up your bag and we can go home and talk about it?"

Pulling back slightly, Jack looked from his aunt to Andrew and back again. "I wanna stay here," he told her quietly. "Can we?"

Andrew nodded. "Sure you can - you guys can stay in my office as long as you'd like. I'll just head to the lounge."

"No!" Jack replied quickly. Seeing the look of surprise on both adults' faces, he chewed on his bottom lip. "I want Drew to stay too. Can he?"

Sarah looked to Andrew and shrugged. Despite his assurances of support, this really wasn't a conversation she wanted to have in front of him. She was fiercely private about so many things, including her relationship with Jack and it was enormously difficult for her now at the most trying moment, to lay herself and her choices bare in front of another person, especially Andrew.

"Of course he can." Her smile belying her anxiety. Taking his hand in hers she led him to the couch and sitting down beside him, draped her arm around his shoulder. "Are you okay Jack?"

He nodded, resting his head against her shoulder. "Where is my Mom?" he asked quietly.

Inhaling quietly Sarah stroked his hair. "She's talking with Eric."

"She ran away from me" he said.

The hurt in his voice was unmistakable and she winced. Sarah was at a loss for words. It was not that she hadn't imagined a hundred conversations with him about his mother but in all the scenarios she had run through her mind, this had never been one of them.

Sitting in his chair, Andrew leaned forward and put his hand on Jack's knee. "Jack, your mom isn't feeling very well these days."

"Is she going to d-die?" he asked, his eyes wide with worry.

"No she isn't. She needs an operation to make her better. She wasn't running away from you bud, she was just really confused."

The young boy pulled on his bottom lip as he mulled what Andrew had told him. Turning, he looked to his aunt. "Is that true Aunt Sarah?"

Smiling gamely, she nodded. "Yes Jack. Nathalie came here because she needs an operation"

"Not to see me?"

Swiping at the tears that had appeared in the corners of his eyes, Sarah kissed him on the top of his head. "We wanted her to be well before she saw you and that's why you were a surprise to her."

It wasn't the most direct answer she could have given but she was not yet ready to explain why his mother had given him up in the first place. She wasn't even sure she could.

"Oh." Falling silent, he reached for his backpack and pulling it to his lap, hugged it.

Still shaken by her sister's rejection Sarah felt, for the first time, completely out of her depth. Unsure of what to say, she looked briefly at Andrew before dropping her eyes to her lap.

"Little man?" Andrew asked.

"Yeah?"

"Do you have other questions?"

He chewed on his finger.

Sensing his tentativeness, Andrew patted his leg. "You can ask anything you want to."

He looked at him and took a deep breath. "Does my Mom love me?"

Andrew felt his own eyes well with tears as demons from his past danced in his head. "She does."

Pulled from her own thoughts, Sarah tightened her arm around his shoulder. "She really does - very much Jackie. And when she's feeling better she'll-"

He interrupted her. "And when she's feeling better, we'll take you to see her."

"Okay," he nodded, looking up at his aunt. "Aunt Sarah, I'm tired, can we go home now?"

"Of course we can Jack. And if you have more questions, you can ask me."

Sliding off the couch, he pulled his backpack over his shoulders and shrugged. "I'm okay for now," he said.

Both Sarah and Andrew recognized that far from being satisfied with the answers he received, Jack was simply letting them off the hook.

#

Andrew had returned to his charting when his beeper vibrated loudly. Picking it up, he exhaled as he saw the message. Slinging his stethoscope around his neck, he sprinted down the hallway to the elevators and then down to the ER. He paced impatiently as he waited for the ambulance to arrive. As was his habit, he tried to visualize the tumor and how he was going to attack it. He knew there would be no time to waste once she got here.

The doors flew open as the paramedics guided the gurney through. They gave him the bullet on her condition while he