Page 75 of Don't Go
He had been there for a few days. His mom had been having bad nights, and he had wanted to be in the house when she couldn't sleep. He had been sleeping in his old bedroom. He had texted me a picture of it last night, and the bedroom had looked like a thirteen-year-old's bedroom, with band posters on the wall.
I had spent three nights at his apartment in the last couple of weeks.
Mrs. Park had stayed over with Bonnie. I'd be home before Bonnie woke up every time. I would take a shower in my own bathroom before Bonnie came out of her bedroom.
That was the deal.
I wasn't bringing him into her life in any way that required explaining.
"M-Mommy."
I turned. "Yeah, baby."
"My chest is doing the tight thing."
I went still.
Not now. Not tonight. Not now.
I turned the burner off.
The grilled cheese could wait until another night.
I crossed to her and crouched at her chair. I put my hand on her cheek — not because I needed to, but because she liked it, because it was the part of the routine since she was five.
"Okay, baby. We are going to do the thing."
She nodded. Pickles, in her lap, had sensed that something was happening and jumped to the floor.
"How long?"
"Ten minutes."
"Belt or rope?"
"Belt. Tighter than usual."
The medication was on the second shelf of the cabinet beside the stove. I had moved it to the second shelf two years ago, when the third shelf was too high to reach at speed. I grabbed at speed. I poured the dose into the small plastic cup we used. I brought it to her.
"Slow sip."
"I know, Mom."
She drank it.
I sat across from her at the table. I took her wrist in my hand — the back of her wrist against my fingers, the pads of my fingers reading her pulse. Her pulse was fast. I held her wrist, looked at her face, and started counting.
She watched me back.
She knew the routine as well as I did. The routine was that I held her wrist for three minutes, that the medication usually started working in two, that on a normal night, by the time I got to two and a half, her chest had loosened, and her shoulders had dropped, and we would go back to whatever we had been doing before her chest would tighten again.
At two and a half minutes, her color started going.
I had seen her color go before. I had seen her color go pale, gray, and blue around her mouth. But the color of her whole face changing wasn't in any of those categories.
"Bonnie," I gasped.
She didn't answer.
