“Stable.” In the hallway, he opened the door to the stairwell for her. “Mind if we stop in the PICU on our way out?”
“Not at all.”
She followed him into a room where a toddler boy slept. He had tawny skin and silky black hair. Dressed in Superman pajamas, he clasped a faded stuffed dog.
She watched Sebastian do what she’d seen him do before, assess the monitors and then carefully straighten the tubes running from the child.
A male nurse with a kind face and balding head slipped inside. “Good afternoon, Dr. Grant.”
“Good afternoon.” Sebastian introduced him to Leah, then asked, “Kidney function?”
“I’m still seeing a negative fluid balance.”
“Good. H and H?”
“Steady.”
Sebastian and Leah left the room.
“Can we look in on Isabella?” she asked.
“If you’d like.”
“I would.”
He led her to the room she remembered. Almost everything remained eerily unchanged. Isabella looked the same, with the ventilator sealed to her mouth. Eight weeks had gone by since Leah’s last visit, and only a few things had altered: today Isabella’s blanket was lavender, and her mom wasn’t present. Megan must have just stepped out because her Bible rested open on her chair.
“I thought sepsis might take her down,” Sebastian said. “But it didn’t.”
“Pull through,” Leah said to the baby, entreaty in her voice.
“She’s a fighter.”
“Then fight,” she said to Isabella.
Silently, she prayed over the tiny girl.
How would she have dealt with this had it been Dylan lying here with a machine breathing for him? How could she have kept it together if Dylan’s life had been the one hanging by the thinnest piece of thread, a thread that God could extend or cut?
All life hung by a thin piece of thread.
Her life included. She knew this.
It’s just that inside this room, Isabella’s thread seemed excruciatingly fragile.
Leah transferred her focus to Sebastian and found him watching her with a look both soft and somber.
“C’mon.” He extended a hand.
She took it.
Sebastian drove Leah to a museum that contained many fine works of art and one particularly private and dim corridor between galleries. When he came to a halt in the corridor, she glanced at him. Immediately, she read what he was thinking in his unrepentant expression.
“Sebastian. You’re a well-respected surgeon in this city. You cannot be found making out in museum hallways.”
“Can’t I?”
“No.”
