Week 11 - UDC 9
51. Skull
Later, after he and his father had gotten Pete off to bed again, Nick wandered out to the kitchen where his mother had finished the dishes and put everything away. She was staring at the wall next to the refrigerator with a thoughtful expression and Nick followed her gaze to realize there was another mark there, slightly above the one with the date on it from Sunday. "Already?"
"Gained half an inch per the scale at the doctor's office," she explained. "And like I thought, it's exactly what his body is trying to do. Growth spurt."
Nick stared at it, at the date next to the new mark, which was today. "Oh."
"He's still the bottom percentile," she added. "And he needs to gain some weight, but it's a step in the right direction."
"Light for being twelve," Nick mused as he glanced back at her. "Mr. Finney's words. We'll get him there, Ma."
"That picture you took to school without my realizing? Grab that for me, would you?"
Nick nodded as he went and grabbed it, brought it back to her.
52. Spine
Helen took the picture from him and propped it up on the table. "Explain?"
"Explain what, Ma? That I had a dumb idea and was emotional?"
She shook her head. "Not a dumb idea, Nick. Not at all. Your heart was in the right place. It's just..."
"Grand gestures and not thinking about it differently and only seeing one side. I know."
"Sit with me," Helen told him, and when he did after drawing one of the chairs closer, she looked at him, then pointed at the picture. "The world captured in that picture frame and the world right now? Two different things, Nick. There's a saying for times like this one: 'They say the past is another country. They do things differently there.'"
"It's an entirely different thing to live it, Ma."
"Didn't say it wasn't." She got him to raise his head and look her in the eyes. "Two things: you are not helpless nor are you powerless."
53. Teeth
"I already had this lecture, Ma."
"Ah, but I'm your mother," Helen told him with a slight smile and motioned to the picture again. "And you took that. I understand, Nick, but... talk to us when you're feeling overwhelmed. Like Alan said earlier: these things do not happen in a vacuum."
"That still sounds terrible." He reached out and traced the figures in the picture. "But I get it, Ma. I want to see him smile like that with us... again, actually. On Sunday, I was so startled I didn't know what to make of it."
"It's amazing what something so simple as a can of soup can do, huh?"
54. Fibula
After his talk with his mother, he found his father sitting on the edge of Pete's bed, reading a book by lamplight. "Dad?" His father glanced up, then motioned him into the room. "How bad was the nightmare, that you're in here?"
Walt set the book on the bedside table. "It was more the temporary amnesia, Nick, than it was the nightmare. He started singing, and a random honk woke him, and..."
"Oh."
Walt shuddered and looked down at Pete's sleeping face. "I can imagine that happening with a constantly crying baby around, and it's disturbing."
"But we've got him now," Nick said ask he sat down, a confidence that he didn't feel in his voice.
"We do." They both startled when Helen brought the box in and set it next to the dresser by the closet. "Got tired of it being in the living room?"
"No," Helen said after a moment. "These are his things and I am taking this step for him, to put it in here. This one, not the next one." She nudged the album on the dresser. "You're not the only one who wants to step in and do something, Nick."
55. Bone
Nick reached over and picked the book up that his father had been reading. "Master and Commander?"
Walt nodded. "It's a good book, and it seemed to calm him down... and it's not too far off from the Horatio Hornblower book that his grandfather read with him."
Nick absorbed that information and moved to have a better purchase on the bed than he'd had. "Go on. You two had him all day. My turn."
"Taking turns now, are we?"
"Dad!"
"I went to work somewhere in there," Walt added with a smirk.
"Loud," Pete mumbled, then yawned. "More of book?"
Walk chuckled. "If you want."