In Her Hands Read online

  His tone was teasing, but Ronnie knew that he was annoyed with the whole situation. He had been stuck at work later and later over the last several months, and the time that the couple could spend time together was dwindling, especially when Ronnie was getting called in for extra shifts, as well. She had to be honest, though, and she knew from the way her blood tingled as it ran through her veins that she'd be out for the count the moment that she got off the phone. “Can you leave it in the fridge, please?”

  Kenny chuckled, but it sounded forced. “Yeah.” Someone in the background yelled again. “I have to go. I love you.”

  The line clicked before Ronnie had a chance to say it back. She sighed and rubbed her face, grinding her teeth and forcing herself to get out of bed. She could hear the cat yowling in the kitchen, and if she didn't feed her soon, Reagan would stalk her until she did.

  Ronnie dragged herself to the kitchen and opened the pantry, blinking against the light as she pulled out the bucket of food. She grabbed Reagan's bowl from off the floor and filled it up, making sure to add a few of Reagan's teeth-cleaning treats into the mix. “Here girl,” she said, yawning again before placing the bowl on the ground next to the fridge. “Think you can let me sleep for a while now?”

  Reagan meowed in response, launching herself off the counter with such force that the rug under her dishes slid a few inches to her left. Ronnie shook her head and closed the pantry, rubbing her eyes and making her way back into the bedroom, where she immediately fell back into her bed. She turned on her heated blanket and snuggled into the warmth, closing her eyes and letting her entire body relax. She had plenty of time until she had to get back to work; she didn't have to stress about her alarm.

  Ronnie was asleep before the thought finished crossing her mind.

  3

  Several hours later, Ronnie woke up to pressure against the base of her throat. She let out a breath and rubbed her nose before startling the rest of the way awake. “Reagan, gross!” she exclaimed, pushing the cat's rear away from her cheek, where the cat had evidently been sitting. Her tail poked Ronnie in the eye as the cat let out a low meow and sauntered off the bed, pausing in the doorway and glancing over her shoulder before disappearing down the hallway.

  Ronnie rubbed her fists against her eyes before yawning loudly. She rolled over and looked at the clock, letting out a groan of annoyance when she realized her alarm would be going off in less than two minutes. She always felt petty and obnoxious mourning those few precious seconds, but in her line of work, she needed all the rest she could get, ninety seconds be damned.

  She sat up and turned, shivering as her feet hit the floor. She remembered putting socks on before she had fallen back asleep, but it wasn't unusual for her tossing and turning to reach monumental movement. She rubbed her eyes again and reached under the covers, patting the mattress until she found both socks. She put them on and forced herself out of bed, groaning at the heaviness in her limbs.

  Reagan walked back into the doorway and meowed, sitting down and cocking her head while she impatiently waited for her owner to feed her. Ronnie rolled her eyes. “Hold your horses, I'm coming,” she muttered, dragging her feet and wincing as the light burned her eyes. She got the container out of the pantry and filled the dish, wrinkling her nose as Reagan got stuck trying to fit under a chair. “You know, if you weren't so damn annoying every time you eat all your food, maybe you'd be able to fit under that chair.”

  Regardless, Ronnie put the dish on the floor and went to the fridge to prepare her own breakfast, her face lighting up when she remembered that Kenny had picked up pastries for her. There was a bottle of raspberry lemonade for her in the fridge, as well, so she put everything on the counter next to her purse, taking out one of the molasses cookies and snacking on it while she went back into her bedroom to get ready for work.

  Once Ronnie was fully dressed, she brushed her hair back into a bun before grabbing her breakfast and her car keys off the counter. She made sure that Reagan was out from under the chair and that the door was locked, making her way down to her car in record time.

  Traffic was light, so it only took her fifteen minutes to get to work. She pulled into her normal parking spot and went on up. She was hoping that Travis would be back to work so that she didn't have any check-ins, but she knew that that was unlikely. The strain of strep that had come into the hospital was nasty, and several nurses had been out for a week or more when the bug caught them off guard.

  Ronnie made her way to the nurse's station, pleasantly surprised when she saw that even though Travis was still out sick, she wasn't responsible for check-ins. She had the new boy, Tommy, on her rotation, as well as a teenager with Leukemia and a ten-year-old with a hole in his heart. All three children were low-risk, so the majority of her day would likely be spent in the day room.

  She grabbed her clipboards and went to visit the teenager first, checking her vitals and reminding her of her chemo treatment before getting her a cup of chocolate ice cream and an apple juice, two of the few things that the girl had been able to stomach since the treatments had started.

  Ronnie made sure that the girl didn't want anything else being leaving, stopping the day room to grab a ball of yarn before going to the ten-year-old's room. She made small talk with the boy's mother and handed the boy his yarn, her own grin growing when she saw the boy excitedly tie the end of his new yarn to the end of his old yarn and finger-weave the two colors together. She ruffled his hair and made sure that his vitals were still steady. “You ready to go home tomorrow, buddy?” she asked, grabbing Allen’s chart off the end of the bed and signing off in the time box.

  Allen stretched the finished part of his weaving and grinned widely. “Yeah! We are going to sew this into a rug for my baby sister’s room when we get home, right mom?”

  The boy’s mother rubbed her belly, patting the top of the bump affectionately. “That’s right, dear.” She looked at Ronnie. “Do you know what time he’s getting discharged yet?”

  Ronnie shook her head. “No, not yet. We should have a better idea in the morning.” She put the clipboard back on the end of the bed and smiled. “Is there anything else you guys need? Allen? Do you have enough yarn?”

  “Yeah!” Allen held up the ball excitedly. “Thanks, Ronnie!”

  “You’re welcome, sweetie. Ms. Malkins, do you need anything? Soda, a magazine?”

  Ms. Malkins shook her head. “No, thank you.”

  Ronnie nodded. “All right. I have another patient to check in on, but I’ll be in the day room this afternoon if you want to come out. I have more yarn in the cabinet.” She reached down and shook Allen’s foot before turning and walking back into the hallway, shutting the door behind her.

  She adjusted her pager on her hip and pumped sanitizer from the hallway onto her hands before knocking on Tommy Vascar’s door. There was no response, so she rubbed the foam in and dried the remaining liquid on her scrubs. She used her hip to push down on the door knob, bumping it open and smiling as she looked in at Tommy, who was in the room without his mother or his sister. He was curled up on the bed around a stuffed dragon, his traditional hospital sheets swapped out for a thick dragon blanket.

  Ronnie chuckled, grabbing the clipboard and starting to record his vitals. “You really like dragons, huh? What do you like about them?”

  Tommy didn’t respond. He rolled over and curled up more, his knees nearly all the way up to his chin. He tried to pull his blanket up over his head, but the IV in his arm prevented him from doing so. “Hey, hey, careful, buddy,” she said, putting the clipboard down on the table next to Tommy’s bed and fixing the blanket so that it covered him more fully without getting tangled. She moved the IV stand closer to the bed and adjusted the bags so that the line wouldn’t pull on the boy’s arm. “There. Is that better?”

  Tommy still didn’t respond, but he didn’t move again, either. Ronnie took it as a sign of contentment and went back to her clipboard, writing down his heart rate and his blood pressur
e. “Where’s your mom, sweetheart? Were you here on your own last night?” No answer. Ronnie skimmed the second page of the clipboard, which was used to keep track of visitors as they came and went, to see that Amy Vascar had signed out around five in the morning. It wasn’t uncommon for parents to leave the hospital for a few hours, be it to go to work or to go home to get a change of clothes, but it always made Ronnie feel a sense of protectiveness when they were gone.

  Ronnie grabbed the thermometer off the wall and took it over to the bed. “Okay, buddy, I need you to roll over for a minute so I can get your temperature, okay? You can go back to sleep when I’m done, I promise.”

  Tommy tensed for a moment before doing as he was asked, rolling over and opening his mouth, squeezing his eyes shut and pressing his cheek into his pillow. Ronnie put her hand under his chin and tilted his head up, sticking the thermometer in and waiting to see what the result was. After fifteen seconds, the thermometer beeped. Ronnie looked at the number before discarding the plastic tip and placing the thermometer back on the wall. “Temperature looks normal, so I’ll leave you to rest. Do you need anything before I go?”

  Tommy shook his head before pulling his dragon stuffy against his chest, his eyes and nose scrunching up even more. Ronnie left the room and headed back towards the nurses station. She sat down at the computer and began to go through her three patients’ records more in-depth. Allen and the teenager had been in the hospital long enough that Ronnie had a general idea of what their families and history was like, even if they weren’t her patients.

  Before Ronnie could get too in-depth with Tommy’s file, she was stopped by Amy and Morrison coming onto the floor. Amy was doing her best to walk normally down the hall, but Morrison was clearly overwhelmed by the frantic atmosphere of the hospital. She was sitting on the top of Amy’s shoes with her hands wrapped around her mother’s calf and her head resting against Amy’s knee, her lower lip quivering when Amy reminded her that she could walk on her own.

  Morrison began to cry upon reaching the nurses station, so Amy groaned and picked her up, setting her on the counter and putting her hands on either side of her hips. “Has anything changed since I left?” she asked, shushing Morrison when she made another whimpering sound. “Is he awake?”

  Ronnie nodded and glanced back at the file on the screen. “He woke up about an hour ago. His night nurse gave him his medication around six, and he seems to be responding well to it. If all goes well, we will be able to do the transplant later today.” She held a hand up. “I know its going to be a challenge, but we really need Tommy to have nothing to eat or drink until after surgery. He can wet his mouth down if he needs to, but try to keep him from swallowing. We don’t want him to get sick during the procedure.”

  Amy pursed her lips, furrowing her brow. “Couldn’t you do the surgery this morning, then, so that he doesn’t have to be uncomfortable all day? Or at least give him a snack, a burger, a single carrot, maybe?”

  Ronnie shook her head. “We can’t move the surgery up, unfortunately. We are waiting for the kidney to arrive from out of state. We will everything we can for him until it arrives, and we will do our very best to make his healing easy on him.”

  “All right.” Amy looked down at the counter, using the hand not holding her daughter to draw designs on the gray plastic countertop. She stared down for several long seconds before looking back at Ronnie. “And the donor matches Tommy’s kidneys, right? The last time we went down this road, his body rejected it. Is that going to happen again?” Amy’s eyes were wide, and Ronnie could see the brutal fear the other woman was feeling. “We tested everyone in our family, and my brother was the only match—it doesn’t make sense that his body rejected it. Is he going to reject this one?”

  Ronnie raised an eyebrow at the woman’s rambling. Amy blushed and looked down at the counter again. “I’m sorry, I’m just—I’m nervous.”

  “That’s understandable. Any parent would worry.” Ronnie smiled encouragingly. “From what I’ve read in his file, Tommy is a healthy boy. He’s going to do just fine.” Amy nodded, but she didn’t look convinced, her eyes shimmering and her lower lip between her teeth. Ronnie reached up and put her hand over Amy’s, squeezing lightly. “Hey, everything is going to be fine. Dr. Johnson does these kind of surgeries all the time, and if Tommy’s body does try to reject the kidney, we will do everything we can to try and remedy it. We won’t let anything happen to your little boy.”

  Amy sniffed and nodded again. “Okay.”

  Ronnie squeezed her hand again before letting go, dropping her hands back down to the keyboard. She made a note about Amy’s concerns in the file before looking back up. Amy seemed frozen in place, her eyes locked on the countertop and her hands tightening around Morrison's waist. Morrison was looking around and humming quietly, toying with a pen that she found on the counter and scribbling on a brochure about medical privacy.

  Ronnie hesitated for a moment before standing. She cleared her throat to get Amy’s attention back on her. “You know, we have a room for children two and under. I can take Morrie over there, if you’d like, so you can spend some time alone with your son until we’re ready for him.”

  Amy blinked and shook her head, loosening her grip on her daughter. She bit her lip before nodding. “That would be helpful. Thank you.” She moved her hands so that only her fingertips were pressed against the toddler. She leaned forward and kissed her head. “You be a good girl for Mommy while she sits with Bubba, okay? I’ll be right back to get you.” She pressed another kiss into the girl’s hair.

  Ronnie walked around the counter and put her hand on Amy’s upper back, rubbing her shoulder in comfort. Amy sniffed again and gave Ronnie a tight smile before stepping away and walking in the direction of Tommy’s room. Morrison immediately started to squirm and call out for her mother, but Ronnie scooped her up and settled her on her hip. “You’re okay, sweetheart,” she said, stroking Morrison's hair and settling her on her hip. Morrison tried to twist out of Ronnie’s arms, so she bounced her and tightened her grip. “Come on, let’s go get you a snack and find you something to play with, hmm?”

  Morrison brightened up at the mention of a snack. Ronnie chuckled. “There, that’s a good girl.” She ruffled Morrison's hair and made her way to the day room. She passed Kara and Timothy, smiling at them as they helped younger children color printouts of their names. She passed through the Cozy Corner, where a few kids were curled up with books, and went into an alcove off the day room, where the entrance was blocked off with a small fence and a gate. There were five toddlers in the room, as well as two non-medical caregivers. There were toys for older infants, toddlers, and the two-year-olds scattered around the room, as well as two small bookshelves, three cribs, and a stack of cots.

  Tiffany, a petite African-American girl who didn’t look any older then eighteen, looked up when Ronnie unlatched the gate and walked in. She smiled and held her hands out to take Morrison, but Morrison, for all her squirming when Ronnie had first picked her up, had decided that Ronnie’s arms was the safest place for her to be. She gripped Ronnie’s shirt and buried her face in the crook of Ronnie’s neck, cold tears falling down and chilling Ronnie’s skin.

  Ronnie shushed her and turned, angling her hip so that it was easier for Tiffany to get the girl. Morrison whimpered again and tried to tighten her grip, but Tiffany was experienced with unruly children, and was able to secure Morrison in her arms without too much of a struggle. She bounced her a few times before gesturing with her head towards the clipboard hanging on the wall at the end of the alcove. “Would you mind signing this little sweetie in for me? Does she have siblings in the unit or does her parent work here?”

  Ronnie shook her head. “Her brother is getting a kidney replacement later this afternoon, so she might be here pretty late. Her mother didn’t mention any food allergies or anything, but I will check with her and bring you any information that’s relevant. Is there a form or anything that you need her to sign?”


  Tiffany nodded before nodding at the clipboard again. “There are extra forms beneath the sign-in sheet. I need mom’s contact information, any food allergies, special routines, health problems, anything like that.” She switched from bouncing her hip to swaying her upper body back and forth gently, rubbing Morrison's back. “I’m not going to feed her until you bring the form back, so try to get it back as soon as you can.”

  “On it.” Ronnie signed Morrison in and grabbed the required forms before turning and walking out of the room, closing the gate behind her. She made her way back through the day room, pausing briefly to check in with Kara and Timothy, as well as to check the sign-in log for that room.

  The sign-in form seemed accurate, so Ronnie hung the board back up and made her way back into Tommy Vascar’s room. She knocked on the doorway and walked in, pumping hand sanitizer onto her hands. Tommy was sleeping, his IV lines resting tangle-free on top of his blanket. Amy was in a chair next to the bed, her elbows propped on the armrests and her head on her hand. She had her eyes closed and she was breathing slowly, her shiny red hair falling over her right eye.

  Ronnie paused, watching Amy for a moment before clearing her throat and walking over, crouching down in front of the chair. She couldn’t explain it, but she was filled with an urge to straighten the woman’s hair. She resisted and shook her knee instead, putting the clipboard on the edge of the bed to her right before standing back up. Amy didn’t move, so Ronnie waited a few seconds before trying again.

  This time, Amy groggily opened her eyes, her mouth hanging partly open and her eyelids low. “What’s wrong?” she asked, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand and smearing her dark mascara. “Is Morrison okay? She doesn’t like being away from her brother. Morrie is a good girl.”

  “Morrie is fine. I just need you to fill out this form for the caregivers so they know if Morrie has any health problems or if she has any food allergies.”