There she is." Natalie turned towards me as I pulled open the door. I had been in my own thoughts after having a lengthy conversation with Eva's teacher. We had finally discussed some techniques we could try to help her, as well as setting her up with a therapist early next week. "Eva was just showing me a picture she was working on. She is quite the artist."
"It's my old house. There were all these pretty flowers by the door" Eva mentioned almost wistfully as she twisted the red crayon in her hand. "What's going to happen to my house and all my stuff? There's no one there anymore." She frowned as I approached the bed she had been hanging out in for the past couple of hours.
"I don't know what they do there, but here when someone dies and they don't have anyone else to help with the house, they hire people to clean it up so someone else can move in. As for your stuff, I haven't discussed it with Eliza. I know she hasn't come to check up on us yet, so maybe she can bring a few things?"
"I guess so." Shrugging her shoulders, she outlined some clouds with the blue crayon before stuffing it back in the box sitting in her lap.
"Anything specific you want?"
"I don't know. Maybe my blue teddy bear. I always leave him on the bed so I can sleep with him."
"Does this teddy bear have a name?" Natalie had been listening patiently to the conversation, even though I was pretty sure she had other patients to attend to. I had seen how busy the emergency department had been tonight when I had gone out to make a phone call.
'Blueberry." A smile appeared in the corner of her mouth, her eyes shining talking about something that meant so much to her. I hadn't seen her light up that way since she had talked about her friends back home. Sometimes I wondered if I was doing the right thing keeping her here in Chicago when her home was back in Michigan.
"Blueberry is the perfect name for a teddy bear." With the yellow crayon in her hand, she went back to drawing a sun in the corner of the paper. "Can we-" Natalie tipped her chin over to the other side of the room. It had been something I had anticipated from the moment I had walked back in.
"Yeah." My stomach knotted in anticipation as I followed her to stand by the far wall by the door. I was pretty good at reading body language, but this time I found her expression as more of a mixed bag.
"I have Eva's test results back." She grabbed the tablet off the cart she must have brought in earlier but made no move to turn it on. "They all came back normal for the most part. She does have raised levels of histamine and serotonin levels, which is why I want our pediatric gastroenterologist, Dr. Peters to take a second look."
"Histamine and serotonin. What does that mean exactly?"
"It means we could be looking at constipation, irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn's, ulcer, pancreatitis or migraines as the reason for her stomach pain." I followed her line of sight, noting the significant change in the volume of her voice was because Eva was watching us and we stepped even more to the side. "We also know Eva lost her adopted parents, moved with her biological mother, and started a new school. That's a lot for anyone to handle, let alone a child."
"You're right, it is."
"It's also hard on the parents when we see our children struggling. When's the last time you got a good night's rest?" I had undoubtedly walked right into that one. Natalie was my doctor as well, of course, she had concern for both of us.
"It's been a while." I wasn't going to admit working for Voight had its disadvantages for keeping a healthy sleep schedule. She probably already knew that, considering we were always coming in at all hours of the night. "Between Eva and work, I feel like I'm doing a lot of back and forth right now until we figure out what works for us."
"I like to call it the juggling act of parenthood." Natalie presented, kindly offering a small smile my way. "After Jeffery died, his mom was helping me a lot with Owen, but I could see it was wearing on her, so that's when I found Betsey."
"Betsey is great, by the way."
"Hailey?" I could hear the sadness in her voice, way before I saw the tears forming in her eyes. "My stomach hurts. I want to go home." Making my way back across the room, I sat down on the chair I had been in before.
"Back to our home?"
"Yeah, our home."
"You know Natalie was just telling me what could be going on with your stomach."
"Is it something bad?"
We're still working on it." I realized we didn't have a lot of information just yet, but maybe this would dispel some of her fears. "I don't think it's anything bad, but in order to stop the pain in your stomach, we need to see another doctor who can tell us exactly what is going on, and then maybe we can go home."
"I need to take this." Natalie's pager went off as she unclipped it from its place on her hip, her expression changing from happy to concerned. "I'll contact Dr. Peters and we'll work on getting you home, okay?" She backed towards the door, her focus mostly on what was going on outside the room. "I'll try to be back when he stops by."
"Thanks, Natalie." She gave a slight nod before disappearing and closing the door behind her.
"Hey, why don't we play a game of tic tac toe while we're waiting?" Reaching over the rails, I grabbed the box from her lap. "Sound good?" She gave the okay, pulling a blank piece of paper from the pile in her hand and I reached into the box to pull out a dark green crayon. "You want to be x or o?"
"X."