Before Dawn

The IV went in just before midnight.

Leo cried when the needle hit, sharp and sudden. Then he grabbed onto two of my fingers and didn't let go.

The nurse pressed a cartoon dinosaur sticker onto the back of his hand. "You're very brave," she said. He stared at it once, glassy-eyed, and closed his eyes again.

Around two in the morning, my phone buzzed. Bella.

"How is he?"

"Fever's still high but the fluids are helping. He's sleeping."

"And you?"

"I'm okay."

"Ella."

"Bella, I'm okay."

A long pause. "Has Derek shown up?"

I looked at the empty chair. The one that should have had someone in it.

"No."

"That son of a—"

"Don't. Not tonight. I can't do that tonight."

She went quiet. Then, softer, "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know yet. I just need to get through tonight."

"Okay," she said. "Okay. Call me if anything changes. I don't care what time it is."

"I will. Get some sleep."

She didn't sound convinced, but she let me go.

I set the phone face down on my knee and looked at Leo. At his small chest rising and falling. At the cartoon dinosaur on the back of his hand.

He proposed to me with a ring he couldn't afford yet and a promise he swore he'd keep forever.

That was the version of Derek I married. The one who paced the apartment the night before his first big pitch, until I sat him down at the kitchen table and played the client so he could rehearse until three in the morning. The one who fell asleep on the couch still in his dress shirt while I watched him and thought, this is what love actually looks like. Not the feeling.

The day Leo was born, Derek wept outside the delivery room. When they let him in, he took my hand in both of his.

"Ella. I will never gonna leave you. Not in this lifetime."

I believed him completely. I believed him even after the photograph, even after I started doing the math on the late nights and the unanswered calls. It wasn't the absence of a man working too hard. It was the absence of a man whose heart had been somewhere else for a very long time.

Around five in the morning, Leo's fever started coming down. I could feel it in his hand, the heat easing, his grip loosening as he slipped into something closer to real sleep.

I let out a breath I felt like I'd been holding for six hours.

Around three thirty, when Leo's breathing had settled into something steady, I stepped into the hallway for coffee I didn't actually want. Anything to move.

Another woman stood at the vending machine, jabbing the buttons through a stack of quarters. Fresh scrubs. Hollow eyes to match mine.

"You're the mom in 214, right? Alone tonight?"

"Just us."

She didn't say anything else about it. Just nodded once, the kind of nod that wasn't pity, and handed me half her pretzels before she walked off down the hall.

I stood there holding a bag of pretzels from a stranger, more grateful for it than I wanted to admit.

In the dark window across from the vending machine, I caught my own reflection. Hollowed out. Barely recognizable as the woman in the photo Derek kept framed on his desk.

I went back to the room and sat down.

Just after six, my phone lit up.

Derek: It got late. Are you and Leo okay? Something came up tonight so I won't make it back.

I read it again and again.

Something came up.

My thumbs hovered over the screen. I typed: I was here alone the entire night. Your son had a 40 degree fever and you didn't come once. Not once, Derek.

I deleted it.

I typed: I know exactly where you were and what came up.

Deleted that too.

Three dots appeared on his side. Then it disappeared. Then it appeared again.

Derek: Ella?

I stared at the two words like they might rearrange themselves into something better.

I typed: Okay.

And sent it before I could change my mind.

The three dots came back. Then nothing. He'd seen it and moved on, already somewhere else in his day.

That was the moment I understood okay was the only word he actually wanted from me anymore.

The hospital was waking up around me, voices getting louder, the smell of the morning shift's coffee coming from somewhere down the hall. Normal Tuesday morning. The world was completely indifferent to what had happened inside it overnight.

A notification dropped from the top of my screen.

Unknown number: Mrs. Derek, there are things you should know.