Page 124 of Love Overdose: St. Louis

“Mama’s right outside.”

His eyes stayed closed. The doors opened, and the bed disappeared into the bright room beyond them. I stood alone in the hallway with his medical binder pressed against my chest. A few minutes earlier, I had known what came next. The scan. The images. The doctor’s explanation. Now all I could do was wait for someone to tell me whether what I suspected was really happening.

17

frankie

6:18 A.M.

Tuesday

The doctor closed the door behind her, and I held my breath waiting for her response.

Malik laid in the center of the emergency bed with oxygen beneath his nose and an IV taped to his hand. He hadn’t opened his eyes since they brought him back from the CT scan.

His Spider-Man sweatshirt had been cut at the neckline because the nurses couldn’t remove it around the wires. The image across his chest was split down the middle.

I kept one hand around his fingers.

“Ms. Mellows, the imaging confirmed a shunt malfunction.”

Nausea rose up my throat, and my vision blurred as my eyes watered.

“Oh noo…”

I tightened my grip on Malik’s hand and concentrated on the warmth of his skin.

“There appears to be an obstruction in the catheter. The shunt isn’t draining the fluid the way it should, and the ventricles in Malik’s brain have enlarged.”

The more she spoke, the tighter my throat became. She stepped closer to the bed. Dr. Lena Shah was printed beneath the hospital logo on her white coat. Pediatric Neurosurgery.

“We need to operate and repair the shunt.”

“How soon?”

“As soon as we prepare an operating room.”

Malik’s chest rose beneath the damaged sweatshirt.

“He had a doctor’s appointment yesterday, and they said his neurological examination was reassuring. I don’t understand how they could’ve missed this?”

“That’s most certainly rare, but if they would’ve done imaging, they would’ve found it before we did.”

“Where is Dr. Hawkins?”

Dr. Shah’s expression shifted. “He’s out of the country.”

“He has an emergency number.”

“We contacted him. He’s in London and unable to return in time.”

“Did you speak to him?”

“The attending on call did. He reviewed Malik’s imaging remotely and agrees that surgery can’t wait.”

I shook my head.

Dr. Hawkins had managed Malik’s hydrocephalus since he was three years old. He knew the path of every catheter and the history of every revision. He knew which side of Malik’s head became tender when the pressure changed. He knew my son.