Page 79 of Don't Go
When I had finished, he took half a breath. "Sabrina."
"Yeah."
"I'm going to write a check tonight."
I went still.
"I'm going to call my comms director, and I'm going to write a check that pays for the procedure in full at whatever hospital and whichever surgeon Dr. Reyes recommends. I'm going to do it tonight and before we leave the lounge."
He turned his head. "Sabrina. Let me."
I came up off his shoulder.
I didn't, at first, know what was going through me. The thing going through me wasn't gratitude. The thing going through me was something that had been waiting to come up for fourteen and a half months and had decided, on the floor of a family lounge, to come up.
"No."
He blinked.
"Sabrina — "
"No, Cross."
"Sabrina, I have the money. It’s just sitting in an account doing nothing. Let me do this for Bonnie. She has been on the foundation's list. Please."
"I don't want your money."
"Sabrina — "
"I don't want to be a project to you. I don't — I don't want my baby — " I couldn't finish the sentence. I tried. The sentence wouldn't come. "The foundation has to. It has to."
He held my eyes. "Sabrina."
I caught his sleeve. "Her birthday is coming up, Beau. I've been trying to prepare for it."
"Sabrina — "
"I have a cake I've been planning. It has three tiers and a fondant cat on top of it because Bonnie wanted a fondant cat on her cake, and I’ve spent some time figuring out how I'm going to make a fondant cat by myself in my apartment and not ruin Bonnie's cake. I have to make her the cake and celebrate her birthday. The foundation has to do the surgery…I have to celebrate her birthday with my daughter, Beau."
15.Beau
I slept for three hours.
I sat on the side of the bed in the dark. There was an old-fashioned clock on the nightstand, a wedding gift to my parents. I didn’t look at the clock. I wasn’t trying to figure out what time it was.
Sabrina was in the hospital.
I drove her there in the evening and stayed in the waiting room until Mrs. Park came to stay with her overnight. Then Sabrina sent me home because she didn't want me sleeping on a hospital chair. So I went home and laid down, but couldn't sleep because the bed felt empty without her, and my mind wouldn't stop.
The letter was still on the bedside table.
I'd been saving it.
I had told myself, three days after the will, that I was saving it for the day I needed it. I had told myself, six days after, the same thing. I'd been telling myself this for fifteen days.
I knew now.
I had known since I had stood in a doorway last night and watched a child eat green Jell-O. I had known since I had found the lounge and seen Sabrina on the floor.
