Bo didn’t hesitate before he replied. “Laugh.”
The honesty pierced Gage’s heart, and he held Bo a little closer. “We’ll laugh again soon, baby. I promise.”
* * *
Three days later,Gage sat in an uncomfortable wooden chair. Bo balanced on his lap. The office they’d been admitted to was small—barely bigger than Gage’s bedroom. It was equipped with an examination table and all the regular medical charts that Gage associated with a doctor’s office, but contained machines that Gage had no name for. The white metal finish of their tubes and rods and wires were coldly sterile and foreboding. Gage did his best not to look at them. Had he been sitting in the office to diagnose a problem within himself, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but knowing that those sleek, intimidating machines might be used on his son? It made him shiver.
Bo, however, was bored—Gage could tell by the way he tugged at his shirt and squirmed. When Gage wasn’t watching him, he reached for Dr. Russo’s desk, seemingly enchanted by the cylindrical container of tongue depressors. When Gage guided his hands away, Bo whined and wheezed and struggled.
“It’s not often that we see young patients in the clinic,” Dr. Russo admitted. He sat a polite distance from Gage, a pen in hand and a notepad resting on his lap. He’d already scribbled a few observations down. Gage figured it had something to do with the audible, crackling wheeze that accompanied each of Bo’s exhalations. “Can you describe what’s been going on?”
“Sure. Um.” Gage looked down at the blond mop that was Bo’s hair. “Last year in April, Bo started to get sick. At first, I thought it was just a regular cold, you know? But he was sick for longer than usual, and… and he wasn’t acting right. I took him to see a GP, he was diagnosed with asthma, and I started treating him with nebulizers to help his breathing.”
The tip of Dr. Russo’s pen rested on the paper. “Was he being treated with corticosteroids, leukotriene modifier, combination inhalers…?”
The question ruffled Gage, clenching in his stomach like the drop on a roller coaster. Was he a failure as a parent if he couldn’t spout off the chemical names of the medications Bo had been on? The longer he searched his memory, looking for answers his brain didn’t want to give up, the more the sensation of frustrated inadequacy tightened its grip on his mind. What would Dr. Russo think of him? How could he prove he wasn’t totally incompetent after this?
“Here.” At last, Gage slid Bo’s medical history across the desk to Dr. Russo. He’d given a copy to the nurse who’d assembled his chart, but he knew enough to always keep an extra copy on hand, just in case. Right now, he was glad for it. It saved him, even if only slightly, from his embarrassment.
Dr. Russo looked down at the paperwork, up at Bo, and down again. His pen scribbled across the notepad, but Gage couldn’t read the chaotic, spiky script. Doctors, he decided, wrote terribly not because they were too busy or too attentive to their craft to try to keep their letters straight—they wrote in obscuring ways so that their patients couldn’t follow along and stick their noses where they didn’t belong.
The hairs on the back of Gage’s neck stood on end. He hooked his arms around Bo and held him a little closer. Bo issued a frustrated wheeze and squirmed, his sharp elbows digging into Gage’s sides.
“And there was no improvement while he was being medicated?” Dr. Russo asked.
“None.”
“Did he display any adverse reactions?”
“No.” Gage frowned. “I mean, he didn’t get any better, which to me is an adverse reaction, but he didn’t get worse.”
“Is the wheezing noise constant, or intermittent?”
“Constant. But it’s not always so bad. When he runs around or exerts himself, it gets a lot worse, and he struggles to breathe. But these days, he doesn’t have as much energy as he did when he was healthy. He doesn’t really run around anymore.”
“And he began to display symptoms approximately a year and a half ago?”
Had it really been that long? Gage winced. “Yes.”
The scratch of a ballpoint against paper filled the space between them. Bo whined again and turned around on Gage’s lap, burying his face against Gage’s chest. Gage petted his hair and wished that they were anywhere but here—the sharp look in Dr. Russo’s eyes was judging, and the smart, concise way he spoke made Gage feel like he wasn’t enough.
“I need to order some additional testing in order to know for sure what’s going on,” Dr. Russo said as he wrote. “We’ll need a chest x-ray to examine his lungs. I’d like to have him take a spirometry test, and we’ll draw blood for a blood gas test.”
“That’s all?” Gage sat up a little straighter, hopeful. He didn’t know what a spirometry test was, but if Dr. Russo just needed an x-ray and some blood drawn, he could figure out a way to afford that. It wouldn’t be so bad.
“I can’t say for certain. It depends on what the tests unveil.” Dr. Russo looked Gage over, and a shiver passed down Gage’s spine. There was a mildly predatory look in the doctor’s eyes, like he saw Gage as a commodity rather than a patient. “What I know for certain is that your son is sick, Mr. Langston. The medical history you submitted lists no known history of illness… are you sure there’s nothing? If not on your side, then perhaps on the side of the child’s other parent?”
“No.” Gage shook his head. “I don’t know about any illnesses. His father and I are both healthy.”
Dr. Russo said nothing, but the way the skin crinkled at the corners of his eyes said that he wasn’t entirely certain that was true. Gage lifted Bo, who made a choked sound of protest, and settled him again on his lap.
“You’ll need to take him to have blood work done. Here’s a referral for his tests.” Dr. Russo scored the top paper on a pad on his desk and tore the sheet free. He handed it to Gage. “You’ll need to arrange for the x-ray as well.” He pulled open a drawer and withdrew another pad, scoring it as well. The paper tore cleanly from the rest, and Dr. Russo extended it to Gage. Gage accepted it, already feeling a little overwhelmed. “When you have the tests done, the results will be sent to my office. When I have them in, we’ll schedule a follow-up appointment to go over the results and have Bo conduct the spirometry test.”
“Okay.”
“With any luck, within the next few months, we’ll have our answers.” Dr. Russo smiled, but there was an odd quality to it that left Gage wondering whether it was genuine or not. There were times, although they weren’t often, when Gage wondered if some of the lingering looks he got were from men who’dseenhim. It was disconcerting to know that there were people out there who knew his face well enough to recognize him, but who he would never be able to identify. “If there’s anything else that you can think of that would cast some light on Bo’s medical history, or if his symptoms start to change or deteriorate before your next appointment, call back.”
“Okay.” Gage didn’t know what else to say. He wished that he’d thought to ask Alex or Mal to come along to help him with Bo—he felt like an idiot, uncertain about what was going on while wrangling a bored, sick preschooler. If he’d had someone else there to entertain Bo, he would have been able to devote his attention to Dr. Russo. “Thank you.”
