Shaun did, in fact, work his way into the previous day's outfit, as Grace had suspected he might – it was his favorite shirt. She decided that, without a shower, sweats were good enough for her, and Ethan, increasingly waxy-looking, made his way into a bathrobe that she fetched for him. He, still angry, shook off her hand on his elbow as he shivered his way out to the car, and Grace flared her nostrils in silent frustration. Shaun uneasily tried to fill the silence between them with chatter that each had trouble following because of their concentration – Grace on the road, Ethan on his discomfort, both on not continuing their argument in front of their son.
They put Ethan's name in at the emergency room, and sat to wait for it to be called. Grace started on the paperwork.
Shaun asked timidly, "Can I go look at the babies?" Grace was saddened, again, that Shaun knew the layout of the hospital well enough to make the request, to find his way there. And that, so soon after their ordeal, they were already fighting hard enough again to make Shaun uncomfortable. She didn't want to let him go, but knew it would be better if she did.
"Okay," she said. "But straight there and straight back, and you come right back here if anyone tries to talk to you, right?" He nodded, trudged off.
"You two don't have to stay," Ethan said, feeling foolish in his bathrobe, manipulated into his current location. His teeth chattered. "I can check myself in. You take Shaun to the park or something."
"You know he'll want to know what they say."
"Fine." He pressed gingerly at his chest, and grimaced.
His obstinance, the slowness of the waiting room, their own stony silence, was already more than she could stand. She pulled a bottle of aspirin out of her purse and pushed it towards him. "Here," she said, "you want to try to take care of it yourself? Take some."
He shook his head, looking straight ahead. "They're gonna come back up."
"I don't care," she said, dropped it into his lap, and folded her arms. "Do whatever you want."
He stared at the bottle for a second, then spitefully shook a few out into his palm, and swallowed them dry. The results were more spectacular than Grace's bluff had anticipated – Ethan bent forward almost immediately, coughing them up on to the floor with a thin stream of bile, and the rest of the room was suddenly paying the Mars couple much more attention. He took a few deep breaths with his head between his knees, straightened up – and passed out entirely, slumping sideways in his chair. Flustered, Grace fumbled to hold him up, calling his name. Suddenly, they were at the center of some very, very interested medical professionals.
He was only out for a minute or so, but it was enough to jump the queue and get him into a bed. Grace went after Shaun while they fussed with Ethan, stalling him with a tattered copy of Boy's Life and telling him to stay put – Shaun was always so nervous when Ethan was asleep, so sensitive to echoes of his six months of coma. She was glad he hadn't been around to see the faint.
When she found her way back to Ethan, she found that matters had already progressed significantly. It hadn't taken long for them to hook Ethan up with an IV for the dehydration and determine the underlying problem – the fading burn on his chest had become badly infected, as, the doctor told them both cheerfully, burns had an annoying tendency to do.
"I can see we sent you home with some antibiotics last time," the doctor continued. "Did you finish those?"
Ethan, shivering again, could feel Grace's eyes burning a hole in him while he decided whether or not to lie.
"Mr. Mars?"
"No," he finally admitted, and the sight, in his peripheral vision, of Grace methodically, deliberately, repeatedly zipping and unzipping her purse, shaking her head, told him just how badly he'd fucked this one up. She remained ominously silent during the medical version of the lecture about why that had been a bad idea, and Ethan could feel her building up a less technical version of her own. Even the doctor began to look as though he wanted to escape the weight of her smoldering presence.
"Well," the doctor finally concluded, "What you've got there is pretty aggressive. But we'll put you on some intravenous antibiotics for now, and you might only have to stay overnight."
It was still only late morning, and Ethan scowled a little at "overnight" through his haze. "I really don't want to spend another day in here," he said.
Grace snorted meaningfully. "You're not coming back to my house tonight," she said. The doctor, visibly uncomfortable, explained that it was for the best, then hurried out. There was a pause.
"I'm sorry I made you take the pills," Grace said.
"You didn't make me do anything," Ethan replied, sullenly. "Though I guess you got your way."
"I'm not sorry about anything else," she continued. "I'm glad I said it. It's true. You're still doing it. You just did it. Nobody cares if you don't want to spend all day here."
A male nurse entered, with a cart, before he could respond, and Grace shot to her feet, escaping before she lost her temper entirely. "I'm going to get Shaun before he works himself up," she said.
"How's Dad?" Shaun asked as soon as he saw her, the magazine forgotten in his lap.
"Come on, you can ask him yourself."
As they entered, the nurse nodded at them, continuing to work with the IV, and Shaun held back timidly.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"I've got to sleep here tonight, but I'll be better in the morning. C'mere." Ethan smiled – slightly unconvincingly, he still looked miserable – and stuck out one hand. Shaun crept forward to take it. "Sorry, Shaun. I'll miss you. You be good for your mom, okay?" Shaun nodded.
Grace felt her petty anger rising, feeling cornered once again into playing Bad Cop. "Okay, Shaun," she said. "We're going to let him get taken care of. Go wait in the hallway for a minute." She closed the door behind him, then turned back to her ex-husband.
She blurted out the important parts. "I'm going to have to go back to work soon. And Shaun needs to get back to school. You know that. But I'm not going to leave Shaun alone with you until I'm sure that you're not going to pull anything like this again. I am calling my sister to see if she can start picking him up from school, and if she says no, I'm calling my mom." Ethan looked angry but unfocused; the nurse, like he was planning an escape route. "We'll be back tonight. You can have all day to think about what you want to say about it."
Back in the car, Shaun studied the toes of his shoes. "Is Dad okay?" That hateful question again.
"He should be. He didn't take his medicine, so they're just giving him some strong stuff at the hospital."
"Oh. Why not?" An even harder question.
"I guess he forgot."
"Oh." Shaun considered his feet. "I'm going to remind him."
"I think it might be better," Grace said, grimly, "If you let your dad try to remember to take it all by himself."
By the time they'd made it back home and she'd finally put lunch into Shaun, gotten herself together for the day – hair washed, makeup on – it was already early afternoon. She could vaguely remember a time when life hadn't been one unending panic, but that might have been high school. "Okay, sweets," she said in Shaun's general direction – he was, thankfully, patiently working with his Legos – "back in the car. We've got to drop by the school and get a whole bunch of work for you."
"Mooooooom." Ah, the old familiar whine.
"I know, honey. Boring stuff." Privately, Grace was grateful that life might becoming more boring again. "Got to do it, though. Tell you what. If we get through all the reading part? Out for ice cream." She'd already decided he deserved the trip no matter what they accomplished, but a little bribery never hurt.
When they showed up to say goodnight, it was only seven thirty, but the curtains were drawn around the other patient in his room, and Ethan was already asleep. His color was better, though, and he was no longer visibly damp. Grace looked cautiously back at the doorway for medical personnel, then squeezed her son's shoulder. "Go ahead," she said, "Wake him up. Be careful about hugging him, his chest hurts, but you can give him a kiss." It was hard to watch Shaun go through his cautious, slightly panicky routine of waking his father, the squeeze of the hand, the rub of the face, the rising, increasingly loud inflection, but Shaun needed to see his father come back to life, and she knew it, so she let him be.
Ethan finally came awake, confused, groggy, and Grace even melted a little bit when she saw the genuine, immediate smile he gave at the sight of Shaun's face.
"Hey, Shaun," he said. "Is it late?" She stepped into the hallway to give them a few minutes alone together. The hallway was depressingly similar to all the other hallways she'd had to stand in, walk down, cry in. She fussed at her hair so she wouldn't have to stare at her watch.
Nevertheless, long practice meant her body told her when time was up, and when she walked back in, Ethan looked drowsy again, worn down by the infection. Shaun was fidgeting. "Okay," she said. "Kiss goodnight, then hallway." She looked away from Shaun's kiss, wanting to stay mad, and again shut the door after him.
"All right," she said, quietly. "So you had all day. Got anything to say?"
"I can't do better until you let me try again." The speech sounded like it had taken a lot of effort. It was less defensive, more focused, than she'd anticipated.
"What are you offering?"
He rubbed sleepily at his face. "Let me come back. I'll move out soon as I can. I'll get a babysitter to help. Someone who can sleep over. You can check references. I will. I'll do it until it's okay."
Grace didn't quite trust him, hadn't expected him to eat this much crow. He'd been so angry, so stupid, this morning. "If you do that, Ethan, we can talk. But you don't get to check out of here until everyone says you can."
"Okay." His eyes were already shut, and she wondered cynically if he'd still remember the conversation in the morning.
Shaun slept in her bed that night; it was the kind of closeness that she found both pleasantly comforting and worrying, in that it felt like a regression to when he was much, much smaller. She wanted him to need her, but also to be okay enough to not need her, anyone. Also, he always kicked like a jackrabbit in his sleep. Keeping him safe and letting him grow up was an endless tightrope, and, most of the time, she felt like she was carrying him alone across it. When she called the hospital in the morning and they said she could come pick Ethan up, Shaun's wriggle told her it was good news, but a big part of her brain wasn't so sure.
The discharge was relatively painless, at least on her end, though poor Shaun was chafing with impatience and boredom. From the staff's response, Grace could tell that Ethan had once again bitched his way into making it everyone's priority to see the back of him. He looked better, though not well, and they spoke very little as he loaded his dirty clothing and himself into the car. Back the house, he offered to help Shaun keep going on his makeup homework, and she let him, jealous of Shaun's lack of protest at doing more work.
Grace herself spent the rest of the morning in her bedroom, on the phone, calling Shaun's school again, her own job, and, after a pause, her sister. She'd made a promise, and she meant to keep it, no matter how unpleasant. Afterward, she sat in the partial darkness, making to-do lists, shopping lists, thinking, worrying, wishing her way back to the life she wished she had.
"Grace?" Ethan appeared palely in the doorway of her bedroom. "Shaun's working on his math. I think I explained it okay, but you'd better check it over when he's done. I . . . I need to lie down for a little bit."
"Oh." Startled, she reminded herself that this was what she wanted him to do – admit when he needed help before something turned into a disaster.
"Shaun and I had some lunch," he said, defensively, "And I took the pills. But it's not really sitting right."
"Okay," she said, and decided to offer him her own olive branch. "Sleep in here. Little more peace and quiet." He hesitated, then nodded, and moved to the bed. Grace left, shutting the door behind her, and headed down the stairs.
On the bed, Ethan stared at the ceiling for a long few thinks, then dug his cell phone out of his pocket and turned it on. He ignored the long strings of messages from various well-wishers and curiosity-seekers, dug out the number he was looking for, dialed. There was an answer almost before the first ring had finished.
"Hello. Ethan, is that you?"
"Yeah, Madison. I'm sorry I haven't called."
"God, no, that's okay. I can't even imagine what things have been like on your end. I mean, I would've liked to – oh, never mind. How is everything? How are you?"
"Fine," he said automatically, then shook his head, though he knew she couldn't see the gesture. "Listen, are you busy?"
"Incredibly," she replied. "But not too busy to talk to you." He hesitated again. "Ethan, are you still there?"
"Yeah," he said, heavily. "Listen, you can say no. It's okay if you need to. But I think I have a favor to ask you."
