Getting on my bike, I turned it in the direction of my house.
All the while with the words Collins had whispered in my ear when I gave her the shirts playing through my head.Mommy likes it when you smile. I know these things.
Well, if Conleigh likes it when I smile? She better get ready to receive every single one I shoot her way.
Over the course of the next two days, I kept an eye on their place and did some landscaping in her yard.
And after the third day, I was on pins and needles. Everything in my body wanted to jump on my bike and head to the hospital.
However, the moment I saw her car pulling into her drive, I was up and off my front porch steps in a heartbeat.
When I saw Collins in the back seat, I continued walking until I got to her side, opened her door, and helped her unbuckle her seatbelt.
Softly I asked, “How are you doing, Buttercup?”
Her little eyes looked up at me, and I knew what she was going to say before she even opened her mouth. “Tired.”
I nodded, “Yeah, I can only imagine.”
I wrapped my arms around her tiny body and pulled her out of the car, shutting the door with my boot.
“Come on,” Conleigh said tiredly.
While carrying Collins up the driveway, it should have hurt that Conleigh didn’t make a note on the work I had done, but she was a single mother with a very sick kid. Only an asshole would get upset.
I was an asshole, but were these two concerned? They’d never see that side of me. No matter what it took.
Walking in through the front door, I followed her to Collins’s room and smiled.
It was just like her. Right smack dab down to the light purple walls. The all-white furniture and even the collection of plush Pokémon. Then right down to the soft gray comforter and sheets that covered her bed.
While Conleigh took her little ballet flats off her feet, I was able to pull the covers down and lay Collins carefully in her bed.
Covering her up, I pressed a kiss to her bald head. Thankfully, Conleigh didn’t care that I had done that when she did the same thing as I stepped back, and then I followed her out of the bedroom.
After she pulled the door to her room closed but left it cracked open, I watched as she leaned against the wall, sighed, and ran her hand through her hair.
“You got bags in the car?” I asked her softly.
“Yes, I’ll get them in a second.” She whispered as she dropped her head.
Walking the few feet to her, I caged her in with hands on either side of her head and said, “I got them. Go take a bath or something and lay the fuck down before you fall down.”
She looked up at me and said in a tired whisper, “I can’t. Collins needs her medicine in a few hours.”
I nodded then, “Just show me where it is and how much she needs. I’ve got this, Baby girl.”
She looked up at me skeptically while she swayed on her feet. Again, I said, “Show me where everything is.”
I stepped back from her and nodded to the kitchen, urging her in that direction.
And when she pulled a bag full of medicine bottles from her bag, I was floored. That little girl had to take all of that?
At least fifteen fucking bottles of medicine?
She pulled out six bottles then, and that still was too much.
“She needs one of each of these. A full glass of water and she has to eat something thirty minutes before, so they don’t make her sick.”