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How could he have been so blind to what was happening? He was a doctor and he’d missed all the signs. Had ignored what his son had told him because he’d thought Joss just didn’t want to go with him.
Then again, Kerry had died on his watch too. If he’d been paying closer attention, maybe he’d have noticed she was slipping, maybe her doctors could have bought her more time before the cancer stole her last breath.
With Joss’s not feeling well and lack of cooperation, texting Chrissie’s mom had completely slipped Trace’s mind. Which meant Chrissie had likely been in a panic before he’d said the first word. What he had to tell her wasn’t going to help matters.
“We’re on our way to your hospital by ambulance. We think Joss has appendicitis.” We being him and the paramedics who’d been waiting where the train had made an emergency stop. “I wanted to spend time with him and took him to ride the trains. We were going to ride, have lunch, and then be home long before you got off work. But things didn’t go as planned and Joss got sick,” he rushed out. “We should be there in—” he glanced at the paramedic monitoring Joss “—four minutes max.”
Once Trace had realized what was going on, his brain had finally kicked into gear and he’d called 911 as he’d stripped Joss’s dirty T-shirt and shorts off him. He hadn’t bothered to redress him, not with his temperature spiked so high.
A couple on the train with their older boys had moved up and offered to help clean up, as had the conductor, who’d radioed the engineer to alert him as to what was happening in one of his passenger cars. Trace hadn’t cared about the mess. All he’d cared about was the little boy who’d been sobbing in pain, asking over and over for his mother as the train had rushed forward to where Joss could be transferred to an ambulance.
While Trace held his hand, the paramedics had started an intravenous line and given Joss something to ease his discomfort as they rushed him toward the emergency room.
Chrissie chewed his ear some more and Trace let her for a moment, knowing he deserved her wrath. Then, he cut the call short so he could focus on his son, whose hand he still held.
“Mommy,” Joss mumbled in his sedated state.
“I called her, buddy. She’ll be waiting for you in the emergency room.”
She was.
The moment the back of the ambulance opened, Chrissie came rushing out of the hospital.
“Oh, God,” she moaned, her gaze assessing Joss on the stretcher as the paramedics unloaded him from the ambulance. “Joss, Mommy’s here,” she told him, rushing alongside the stretcher as they wheeled Joss into the hospital.
Trace kept up with the stretcher as well.
“Mommy’s here,” she told Joss over and over until the emergency-room nurse hugged Chrissie, pulling her back from the stretcher. “No,” she protested.
“They need to do imaging. You can’t be in the room. I’m sorry.”
Trace wanted to argue, wanted to say he and Chrissie could go in with their son, but he knew to do so would slow down everything.
“Come on, Chrissie. Let them do their job so Joss can get the best care as quickly as possible.”
Never had Trace felt a bigger failure than when Chrissie turned to him.
“Don’t you tell me what to do when it comes to my son,” she hissed at him. “I never should have left him with you. Never.”
* * *
Chrissie felt Trace’s flinch all the way to her core, but she couldn’t retract her words. Just as she couldn’t retract the things she’d said to him when he’d called her.
Seemed she was always saying something she wished she could take back when it came to Trace.
But the sound of the siren, knowing her baby was hurt, the sight of Joss’s little body lying on that stretcher, had undone her.
She liked to think of herself as an empathetic, compassionate nurse, but never had she experienced anything to prepare her for the pain and fear of seeing her child like that.
She’d lashed out at Trace.
Maybe because she’d already been in a panic, thinking Trace had taken her son, just as her father had run with her.
He hadn’t. He’d wanted to take Joss for a train ride. He’d wanted to give their son a fun day and had had no intentions of kidnapping him.
But Chrissie couldn’t erase the devastation she’d felt at her mother’s words that no one was at her house and she’d taken all her emotions out on Trace.
That had been an hour ago. Or a day ago. Or a week ago. Time had no meaning to Chrissie and with the way each second dragged by she’d believe years had passed since her son had been taken for emergency surgery for a ruptured appendix.
