everywhere. I mean, there’s probably cum on every surface you can think of.”
19
Owen
* * *
“Hey, Owen.”
I draw up short as my boss, Marie, the nursing supervisor here in the ED, calls out to me just before I’m about to leave for the night. It’s been one hell of a shift—New Year’s Eve in the ED is always crazy as hell—and very unusually for me, I’m actually looking forward to getting home to what I know will be a house full of my family and friends. I’m not a big party person, but if Blake and everyone else I love is there it sounds perfect to me.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“Did you treat a boy named Ryder Bellamy a couple weeks ago?”
My brows shoot up. “He came in a few days before Christmas. Why?”
Her lips purse in a tight frown. “He was back again tonight.”
An inexplicable wave of panic rushes through me. I don’t understand it; I barely even know Ryder, but I feel a visceral need to know he’s okay. “What happened? Is he alright? Was it another seizure?”
One of Marie’s perfectly-sculpted brows arches up, but she doesn’t comment on my desperate demeanor. “He’s okay. And yes, it was another seizure. He’s back up in pediatric neurology now.” She draws in a deep breath and then lets it out. “But that’s not why I stopped you from leaving. Holly Vale wants to talk to you. It seems Ryder’s foster mother has left him here.”
My mouth parts in surprise and I just stare at Marie for a moment. Holly Vale is one of the hospital’s on-call social workers. “Left? As in…she abandoned him?”
Marie frowns, her head nodding sadly. “It seems that way, yeah.”
“Where’s Holly?”
“Up in pediatrics, with Ryder.”
I give Marie a nod of thanks and turn on my heel back toward the elevators.
As I make my way up to pediatrics, I figure I should probably give Blake a call to let him know what’s going on.
“Hey, um, I’m not going to get home for the party tonight.”
Blake lets out an affectionate chuckle. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“No, that’s not…” I sigh. “Believe it or not, I actually wanted to be there this year.”
“O, what’s going on? Is something wrong?” His voice is full of concern and it makes my heart just melt. I hate that he’s worried but I love how much he cares.
“Not exactly. Sorry, I know you have a house full of guests, but is there any way you can get to the hospital?” I ask. “I’ll be in the pediatric ward.”
“The pediatric ward?”
I nod, although I know he can’t see me. “Yeah.”
Blake sighs. “Okay. I’m on my way.”
“Wait—Blake…”
“What is it, sweetheart?”
I draw in a deep breath, knowing I’m pretty much asking him to do the impossible. “Can you bring Elmo?”
“Elmo?”
“Yeah…like, not the actual Muppet, but a toy, or something with Elmo on it.”
He pauses for a long moment before finally saying, “I’ll see what I can do.”
We end the call and I release a heavy breath, letting my head fall back against the wall of the elevator. The odds of Blake being able to find something ‘Elmo’ at eleven pm on New Year’s Eve is next to impossible, but I know if anyone can it’s him.
Ryder’s room is easy to find once I step off the elevator onto the pediatrics ward; as it happens, it’s the same room he was in when I came to visit a couple days before Christmas. I know they’d been running tests at that time—ECGs and MRIs to check his brain activity—but they hadn’t made a conclusive diagnosis at that point. With how busy everything has been since then I’ve forgotten to follow up.
Holly greets me with a kind smile when I meet her in Ryder’s room. The boy himself is fast asleep; evidently they required the use of Valium to bring him out of the seizure this time and that stuff can really knock you down.
“Do you know what happened?” I ask Holly after she ushers me out into the hall. “Marie didn’t give details.”
“I just know that he came in seizing. Andrea Lawson and Dev Gavaskar were the nurses treating him.”
“Andrea was with me last time.”
Holly nods. “Yes, she said as much. That’s why I asked to see you.”
At Holly’s request, I give a brief recount of what happened the night Ryder was brought in just before Christmas. I keep it straightforward and unbiased, especially when it comes to answering Holly’s questions about Ryder’s former foster mother. I know Holly’s just doing her