“Hey, baby. I’m here.”
“It hurts.” She clasps at her throat.
“I know. The medicine’s going to help. It just needs a little more time.”
I say this with complete confidence, and I mostly believe it, and the part of me that doesn’t believe it is the part I don’t let into my voice.
I do the six AM routine. Ibuprofen, the smallest amount of apple juice I can get into her. It’s not much—her eyes tear up from the acid in it, but she likes the taste. I place a cool cloth on her forehead that she tolerates for about four minutes before pushing it off. I drink coffee while standing at the window because sitting down feels like giving in to how tired I am.
The morning is gray and quiet in the way April mornings are before the city gets going, and I stand there with my mug and my phone and think about Dario’s number, which I have memorized by now even though I haven’t made myself memorize it. Some information just sticks when your brain decides it’s survival-adjacent.
He said day or night.
Doctors say that. Kind doctors, doctors with good bedside manner, doctors who mean well, and have a lot of patients. It’s the kind of thing you say when you hand someone a card or a number. It was a gesture, not a promise. A polite door that looks open but has a lock.
I might be young, but I know when someone is just being nice. I stand there for twenty minutes. I drink my coffee. I check on Opal twice.
Being nice or not, I don’t have a choice.
I text him:“Hi, this is Lena Swan from the clinic last night. Opal’s fever is still 102.8 this morning, and she’s really struggling to swallow. I know you’re probably in the middle of your actual life, so no pressure, but I didn’t know who else to reach out to. Sorry to bother you.”I press send and put the phone face down on the counter and tell myself to stop staring at it.
The thing I keep coming back to is that I don’t ask for things. When you’ve been the only person you can reliably count on for long enough, reaching toward someone else starts to feel like a structural risk. Like putting weight on a floor you haven’t tested. I’ve been shot down enough times to just rely on myself.
My phone buzzes before the coffee goes cold.“I’ll be right over.”
Four words. I read them twice, then a third time in case I’m inventing a meaning that isn’t there. By the fourth read, tears flood my eyes. I can’t believe he’s actually going to help.
I text back my address, and then I look at the apartment. Clean laundry piled on the armchair, Opal’s coloring project spread across the kitchen table, three mismatched mugs in the dish rack, the stuffed rabbit she claims she’s too old for lying on the bathroom floor. He can’t see this.
I do the fastest, most targeted tidying of my life. Not because I care what he thinks. Because doing something with my hands keeps me from examining too closely what I’m feeling, which is something in the vicinity of relief, and I’m not ready to look at that yet.
Relief has always been a lie in my experience. So I shove it down and ignore that it’s there, staring at me.
Dario arrives forty minutes later. I open the door expecting a quick professional visit at most. But he’s got a proper black medical bag with a clasp, a paper grocery bag in his other arm, and a box of cherry ice pops tucked under his elbow.
He stopped for groceries?
He steps in and does that quick sweep of me in my sleep shirt, hair half out of its braid, and says nothing about any of it. He says, “How was she overnight?”
“Up twice. Crying. She says the water hurts going down.”
He nods and goes to her room like the apartment is already oriented to him, which it isn’t. He’s never been here before, and yet he moves through it that way. No hovering in doorways, no performance of being a guest.
The boldness of doctors, I guess.
I stand in the doorway and watch him with Opal. The doctors she sees are professional with her. Efficient. Kind, in a managed way. Pediatricians are like that.
But Dario is patient in a way that doesn’t seem like a technique. He asks her if she’d rather he check her ears first or her throat, and actually waits while she considers. He produces the box of cherry ice pops and tells her she can have one now, not after, because the cold will feel good on her throat while he finishes up.
Her eyes go wide, before she looks at me to check in.
I smile and nod. “Yeah, baby, go ahead.”
She gobbles one down, and there’s that relief again. The liar. But she looks so happy to have it, and I’m grateful she’s eating anything at all.
He finishes the examination. He updates the antibiotic protocol and explains it to me without the usual condescension I’ve become accustomed to. He leaves the script on the counter and a clear note about warning signs beside it. Then he unpacks the grocery bag: chicken stock, pudding cups, ramen, children’s ibuprofen, and a box of throat-soothing tea.
I don’t even know what to say, except, “You didn’t have to bring all this.”
