“Our baby.”
“Doctor?” He voice was like a scream, wild and primal. “What’s wrong with him?”
The doctor didn’t answer. Fear curdled inside Fiero. “Nothing. Everything’s fine.”
But it wasn’t fine. The doctor lay their son, so perfect, so beautiful, on the cold stainless steel trolley and Fiero stayed where he was, gripping Alison’s hand as she gripped his right back, and they watched a team of doctors and nurses work on him. CPR on a child was a distressing sight, but nothing more terrifying than the lack of screaming, the lack of breathing.
“Christo,”he muttered under his breath, but the little boy heard, and winced at the harshness of Fiero’s tone. The look was enough to drag him back to the present, to this boy who was very much alive.
What had the nurse said his name was? “Jack?”
The little boy’s eyes narrowed and Fiero’s stomach twisted with another burst of pride. He appeared to be both cautious and thoughtful – qualities Fiero greatly approved of.
“Who’re you?”
And despite the situation, Fiero found himself biting back a smile. “You can call me Fiero, if you’d like.” He instinctively shied away from pushing too much information on the child too soon, even when he wanted to beat his chest and proclaim his fatherhood to all and sundry. Elodie’s current condition meant there was already enough tumult in Jack’s life, and more to come.
“Where’s mama?”
Fiero’s eyes swept shut for a moment, disgust overtaking every other emotion. He pictured Elodie upstairs in the hospital bed, and wished he could express his rage to her, wished he could make her know exactly what he thought of her choices.
“Asleep.” He was surprised by how calm his voice sounded.
“She hurt.”
The little boy’s lower lip trembled, but he didn’t cry. Instead, he dipped his head forward, and whispered, “S’my fault.”
Curiosity plucked Fiero’s brow. “Oh?”
And the little boy nodded and began to speak very quickly, too quickly for Fiero to comprehend the entirety of what he was saying. He heard ‘ball’ and ‘truck’ and ‘shout’ and ‘ball’ again, enough to gather the gist – that a ball had rolled onto the street and somehow in the retrieval of the ball, Elodie had been struck by a vehicle.
The rest he knew from the nurse.
“That’s not your fault,” he soothed, the shocking imagery of Elodie’s delicate body being clipped by a truck and thrown across the pavement one he didn’t relish contemplating. How must it be for the boy, who had witnessed the accident? Sympathy swelled in Fiero’s chest.
“S’my fault,” the boy repeated, more emphatically.
Fiero had little experience with small children. He was sure there was something he should say, something that would wipe the glum look off the little boy’s face. He wanted to offer reassurance even as it ran against his natural grain to give false hope – and having seen Elodie’s condition, he couldn’t say with any certainty how full her recovery would be.
“The doctors will help your mother,” he said instead, hoping the child wouldn’t detect the nuance of the statement.
“Doctors hurt,” Jack pronounced, so Fiero’s eyebrows drew together. Jack lifted a chubby little hand to his shoulder, rubbing it with a remembered wince. “Sharp needles. Ouch.”
“Ah.” Fiero’s voice cracked a little. A swell of emotion made it hard to concentrate. “Shots do hurt, yes.”
How many of the boy’s immunisations had he missed? How many tears? Tears at the doctor’s surgery or tears such as would have fallen today? He’d missed so much – and he wouldn’t miss another damned thing. With the rapier-like precision he was famed for, he stood, tousling the boy’s thick dark hair as he did. “I’ll be right back, Jack.”
“Mama?”
He didn’t betray a hint of his feelings to the little boy. “Your mother will need to stay here a while, to get better. Until she does, you’re going to come home with me. Okay?”
Jack didn’t respond immediately, but he tilted his head, considering this. “You’re a stranger.”
He was only two, but Fiero had to give the little boy credit for clear thinking even as the word was like a blade through his heart. “Not really,” he promised with a smile designed to reassure. “I know your mama, and she’s asked me to take care of your while she’s sick. Okay?”
The little boy nodded, but looked far from convinced.
Fiero decided to pull out the big guns. He crouched down once more, so he was at the boy’s eye level. “Of course, I live faraway, over the sea, so we’ll need to go on an aeroplane to reach my home. Have you ever been on an aeroplane, Jack?”