Michael stopped walking for half a second and then made himself start again. Calm. Four blocks. He could do four blocks.
The hospital rose at the end of Mercer Street, a pale brick building with a revolving door and flags snapping in the October wind. St. Catherine's. Michael had driven past it a hundred times and never once imagined walking through its doors with two children and a photograph he had taken nine years ago.
Inside, the lobby smelled of disinfectant and coffee. Michael steered them to the information desk, Lily's hand suddenly tight in his.
"Claire Rourke," he said to the woman at the desk. "She was admitted today, I think. Is she all right? Can we see her?"
The woman typed, the soft clicking filling the pause. "Rourke, Claire. Yes. Third floor, room 314. She's stable. The doctors are still running tests, so we don't have a full picture yet, but she's stable and resting."
Stable. Michael exhaled. "Visiting hours?"
"They end at six." The woman glanced at the clock above the desk. It read a quarter to. "You'll need to hurry. Two visitors per patient, and children need to be accompanied."
"We'll hurry," Michael said.
Ethan knew the way to the elevators. Of course he did. He pressed the button for the third floor with a familiarity that made Michael's stomach ache, and when the doors opened he led them down the corridor without hesitation, past rooms with half-drawn curtains and nurses moving with quiet purpose.
Lily leaned close to Michael and whispered, "Is she going to be okay?"
Michael looked at Ethan's small back, at the thin jacket and the paper bag clutched in one hand, and chose his words the way he chose words in court, carefully, because they mattered.
"She's stable," he said. "That's what they told us. The rest we'll find out when we see her."
Room 314. Ethan stopped outside the door and suddenly looked very much like the eight-year-old he was, small and uncertain, his courage gathering itself for one more hard thing.
Michael put a hand on his shoulder. It was light, the shoulder of a kid who needed extra carrots.
"Ready?" he asked.
Ethan nodded. Lily took his other hand.
Michael knocked, and pushed the door open.
Chapter 4: St. Catherine's
The nurses' station pointed them to the west wing, and Ethan led the way like a kid who had walked that hall too many times. Room 314. The door stood half open. Michael stopped at the threshold and looked in, and his breath caught before he could stop it.
She was asleep. Propped up on pillows, an IV line taped to the back of her hand, oxygen cannula under her nose. She was thinner than the woman in the lake photo, thinner than the Claire who had laughed at his bad jokes nine summers ago. Her cheekbones stood out. Her hair, still dark, had been pulled into a loose braid. The blanket rose and fell in shallow breaths.
"Is that Mom?" Lily whispered.
Ethan didn't whisper. He walked in like the room belonged to him, which it did in a way. "Mom."
Claire's eyes opened. She looked at her son. Then she looked past him, and her whole face changed. She saw Michael standing there holding Lily's hand, and Michael saw nine years collapse into a single second: shock, then something like panic, then the kind of pride that tried to sit up straighter in a hospital bed.
"What are you doing here?" Her voice was thin. She reached for the oxygen cannula as if to pull it off, then stopped herself.
"I walked," Ethan said, because he had walked, and that was the truth.
Claire looked at Michael. "You brought him here?"
"He came to me." Michael stepped forward slowly, the way you approach a skittish animal. "At the park. Lily found him first."
Claire's gaze slid to Lily, small and blond and staring with huge eyes. She looked back at her son.
"Mom, I had to," Ethan said. "You said if something happened. I found the photo."
For a long moment nobody spoke. The machines ticked. A cart rattled somewhere down the hall.
Then Claire said, "Come here." She held out her hand, and Ethan went to her, climbed carefully onto the bed beside her legs, and she folded him into her arm like it was the easiest thing in the world. She looked at Michael over the top of her son's head. "He's yours. I'm sorry you found out like this."
Michael had expected, somewhere deep down, that she'd argue, or deny, or cry. She did none of that. She just looked at him, dignified and exhausted, and understood with a sudden ache that this woman had carried eight years of parenting alone and would never have asked him for anything.
"I'm not," he said quietly. "Sorry. I'm not sorry I found out."
She held his gaze, then nodded once, a small tired concession. She was embarrassed, he realized, not by the truth but by the cannula, the IV, the thinness of her wrists on the blanket. Being seen this way. He wanted to tell her it didn't matter, but everything in him knew the words would be wrong.
A knock saved them both. A tall man in a white coat entered, mid fifties, calm eyes, the kind of stillness that comes from delivering bad news well.
"Dr. Okafor," he said, shaking Michael's hand. "You're the father."
"Yes," Michael said, and the word landed strangely and completely at once. "Michael Rourke."
Dr. Okafor turned to Claire. "I see your whole family made it. How are we feeling, Claire?"
"Fine," she said, too fast.
Okafor's mouth twitched, just barely. "Claire's heart has a structural problem," he said, addressing Michael directly. "Severe mitral valve regurgitation. The valve between two chambers leaks, and blood flows backward instead of forward. Over time, that strains the heart."
"Can it be fixed?" Michael asked.
"Yes. She needs surgical valve repair. The sooner the better, honestly."
Michael looked at Claire. "How long have you known?"
She didn't answer right away. Ethan picked at a thread on the blanket.
"Claire," Okafor said gently, "the children should hear this from you."
She closed her eyes for a breath. "About a year. Maybe a little more." Her voice was low. "It was small at first. Then it got worse. I thought, if I could just make it through the school year, Ethan could stay with Mrs. Figueroa during the recovery, and nobody would have to make a fuss."
"You hid this from Ethan," Michael said.
"I hid it from everyone." She opened her eyes. "I was managing it. Then Tuesday I couldn't breathe, and Mrs. Figueroa called the ambulance."
"Mom?" Ethan's voice was very small. "You said you were just tired."
"I know, baby. I'm sorry." She stroked his hair. "I was scared. When grownups are scared, sometimes they do the wrong thing, even when they know it's wrong."
Lily, who had been silent this whole time, suddenly stepped forward and climbed onto Michael's lap where he sat on the edge of the bed. "Are you going to fix her heart?" she asked Okafor, blunt as ever.
"We're going to try very hard," Okafor said. "That's the plan."