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And to take up the bulk of our respective beds she conned her way into sharing.
That’s normal.
The rest of what Brit tells me isn’t.
“Your mom mentioned she might not be feeling well, that she’d had a stomachache and didn’t eat dinner.” Another breath. “I just figured it was normal kid stuff. But then she started puking and had a fever and said her stomach hurt really, really bad. I was worried, but not too much because she’s a kid and kids get sick and?—”
Her voice trembles.
My heart squeezes hard. “Brit, sweetheart?—”
“And she kept puking,” she blurts out. “And was so hot. I took her temperature and it was a hundred-and-five?—”
I jolt.
Because Roxie’s been sick before.
But not with a fever that high.
“And she was hurting, and I didn’t know what to do, so I bundled her up and drove her to the hospital and?—”
The noise rises in the background.
But before I can order Brit to go on, the din quiets and she starts talking again as I get out of bed and move to my dresser, start yanking out clothes, pulling them on. “—and they’re not exactly sure what’s going on still, but they’ve given her something for her fever and the pain and they’re sending her to get a CT scan to check her appendix and—” Her voice hitches again before the volume decreases. “—she might have to have emergency surgery, hon?—”
An exhale.
The endearment cut off in the tracks.
“She might have to have emergency surgery, Stefan?—”
A razor blade over my skin. A knife to the kidneys. A lance between my ribs.
“—and I thought you should know,” she says, her tone even now. The panic faded. The worry carefully hidden and banked. “I know it’s not your custody time, but she’s asking for you. But you don’t have to come?—”
“Brit.”
“—I just thought you should know what’s going on and?—”
“Brit.”
“—I should go, let you get back to sleep?—”
“Shut up, sweetheart.”
She inhales, that air rattling my cell’s speaker again.
Another endearment.
Fucking stupid.
Emotions—mine—barreling through the wall she erected like the Kool-Aid Man.
“I—”
“What hospital are you two at?” I blurt out before she can tell me to shut the fuck up, to stop being a goddamn idiot.
She tells me. “But you don’t have to come?—”
