The hospital switchboard pages Doctor Rowan Chase in the middle of an important departmental meeting; he's angrier still when he learns that he'll have to drive thirty clicks during rush hour traffic to fetch his child while the local constabulary holds his wife in custody. At his entrance, the little boy jumps up from a chair in the corner of the police station and runs to throw his arms around his father. His little voice is shrill as he begs Rowan to make the policemen let Mum go.
Robbie's fair skin is going to blister, is Rowan's first thought. He's aghast at the angry puce that covers most of his son's slight form. The boy is dehydrated as well, and his father detects an odor of vomit.
The constable verifies that Robbie sicked up on the lifeguard who'd noticed the boy heading directly for the water without supervision. Robbie yelled and fussed when stopped, just as he was taught to do when approached by a stranger, but Cynthia didn't respond. The lifeguard had noticed him going back and forth to the blanket during the day, and when he dragged Robbie over there, discovered the boy's mother was...under the weather.
Reassuring the little boy, Rowan arranges to have Cynthia's car towed home. Emotions are a tangled knot in Rowan's chest. Foremost is horror that he might have lost his son, followed closely by his shame at Cynthia's condition and rage that she allowed this to happen. His wife is escorted to the waiting room, and her husband gives her one severe look before talking Robbie by the hand and guiding him out to the car, Cynthia stumbling in their wake. It's a long drive back to their home, Robbie whimpering from the pain of his sunburn. His wife vomits in the back seat, making the atmosphere in the car doubly unpleasant.
One of the useful things about being a rising doctor on the staff of a good hospital: doctors protect their own, and when he checks his wife in for detox, she's well cared for. The tox screen comes back as borderline alcohol poisoning, and he shudders at how the day's outing has nearly cost him his family.
It's more than a little ironic that he ends up hiring a newly-retired nurse of his acquaintance to mind Robbie while his mother is in rehab. Cynthia, when she's sober enough to realize what happened to them, is mortified. Her contrition is wholly sincere, and Rowan hopes she'll stay cleaned up.
Just in case, he signs Robbie up for swimming lessons as soon as his sunburn has healed.