Ch. 11 – St. Louis, March 2019
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Sasha groaned as, once again, she heard a hacking cough coming from the bedroom down the hall. She squinted at the clock on the bedside table.
4:17.
Before she could force exhausted limbs out of bed for the fourth – maybe fifth? – time that night, Tom sat up. "I'll get him."
"You can't use the nebulizer for another hour, at least," Sasha called towards Tom's back as he reached the door to the room.
"I know. I'm going to take him outside, see if the cold air helps," Tom responded, the words muffled as he pulled a windbreaker over his head.
Sasha watched the clock tick from 4:17 to 4:18 to 4:19, all the way to 4:32, ears straining for the sound of the door opening again, fearing that they would need to make another middle of the night trip to see Doc Rios.
Delivering Kaito Slattery – following an emergency crash course in c-sections obtained via the Navy onboard medical database – had been a turning point in Timothy's life. Upon his return to St. Louis, he convinced one of the few surviving pediatricians (the virus did a number on medical professionals) to let him sign on as a trainee, fitting his studies around his duties with the Navy. A year ago, his deployment over, Rios made the decision not to re-enlist and instead opened his own family medicine practice, becoming a one-man urgent care facility overnight.
The sound of the front door opening caught Sasha's attention. She listened carefully, straining for the distinctive sound of Jake's labored breathing, but all she could hear were Tom's light footsteps headed down the hall. A moment later he appeared in the doorway, tossing the windbreaker on the chair before crawling into bed and pressing his cold nose against the back of her neck. Sasha batted him away.
"I knew that you wouldn't be able to go back to sleep," Tom said wryly.
Sasha didn't bother denying it. "How is Jake's breathing?"
"He fell back asleep within a minute of being out in the cold air. I cracked the window in his bedroom," Tom answered sleepily.
A minute later Tom was snoring, while Sasha remaining wide-eyed, her adrenaline pumping. Giving up the pretense of sleep, Sasha tossed the covers to the side and padded down the hall towards Jake's room. At the doorway she paused, gazing at the two-year old who was curled up beneath the covers, thumb in mouth, chestnut hair sticking in all directions - the spitting image of his father. She needed to see him, needed to be reassured that this was just a bad cold, or maybe a little bit of asthma. Nothing serious. Nothing life-threatening.
She wasn't going to lose Jake like she had Tommy.
Stretching out next to the boy on the twin bed, curling one arm beneath her head, Sasha rested a hand on her son's chest, the steady thud of his heart and regular rising and falling of his chest soothing her anxiety. Next thing she knew, Sasha was blinking at the cup of coffee sitting inches from her face. Hands reaching up automatically, she cradled the warm cup, breathing in the familiar scent.
"Where's Jake?"
"I put on Curious George," Tom responding, easing his frame onto the end of the bed.
"Ah, Kara's trick," Sasha murmured, pushing herself to a seated position. Jake's twin bed wasn't designed to fit two fully grown adults.
"What?" The puzzled look on Tom's face quickly morphed into wry amusement. "I'm going to assume that I really don't want to know."
"Probably not," Sasha murmured, although she did shift her hand to rest a little higher on Tom's thigh than she normally would. "I'm pretty sure that Kara's pregnant again. She made a rather abrupt departure when she dropped off Jake's medicine yesterday and saw that I was cooking fish."
Tom snorted. "Those two are worse than teenagers. Half the time I'm scared to open Kara's office door, just in case."
"They are obviously taking the repopulation efforts very seriously," Sasha replied smartly.
Though Sasha's words were in jest, Tom's face grew serious as he considered her. "Do you ever wish that…we had another?"
Sasha gazed down at her coffee, considering Tom's words. Even back when she was pregnant with Tommy, she had never really imagined more than one child. And it wasn't as if Jake was an only child. He had Ashley and Sam, and plenty of "cousins" (as well as more on the way). She raised her head to look at Tom.
"No, I don't."
Sasha swung her feet off the small mattress, tugging at Tom's hand. "It sounds like we have roughly fifteen minutes left of Curious George and, while I don't want another baby, I wouldn't mind spending a little bit of alone time with my husband."