He didn’t pretend the moment hadn’t changed. He folded his hands on top of the clipboard and looked at me.
“The wall thickness has increased on this echo. Exercise tolerance is down. The ectopic beats — the irregular ones — are happening more often than they were even at her last visit, and her last visit was eight weeks ago, not eight months. The numbers aren’t catastrophic, but they aren’t where I’d like them to be either. We’re inside a window that’s closing, Ms. Vela.”
I had my hands on my knees, palms up. I hadn’t put them there on purpose. I’d set them down at some point and forgotten to move them.
“Spring is — when? April? May?”
“Fourth week of April was the last update I had.”
“And how long do you — ”
“Bonnie doesn’t have until April, Ms. Vela.”
I felt like something struck me. But I could only nod.
“The current schedule has her in the spring window because it was the next available foundation slot when she came up for reevaluation. I’m telling you, in the most direct language I have, that the spring window isn’t medically defensible for your daughter at this point. We need to be having conversations about contingency planning, out-of-network options, other programs, other hospitals. I don’t say this to alarm you. I say it because your daughter doesn’t have the time the foundation appears to be operating on.”
I nodded again.
I thanked him.
Then picked up my coat from the back of the chair, told him I’d be in touch, and left the room.
Bonnie was at the nurse’s station with three sticker sheets fanned in front of her. The nurse was leaning on the desk, letting the negotiation run its course.
Bonnie spotted me and stood up. “I picked the dolphins.”
“Good choice, baby.”
She pocketed the sticker sheet and zipped her backpack. I took her hand, and we started for the elevator.
My brain was two floors up, in the foundation office on the seventh floor, where the receptionist didn’t know me yet but would know me by the end of business today. I was rehearsing the sentence I was going to put at the front of the call:Mydaughter has weeks, not months, and you're about to learn how I deal with weeks.
I rounded the corner and walked into a chest in a navy sweater. The chest knocked the wind out of me. His shoulder hit my shoulder. We both stepped back at the same time, and it wasn't until our faces had come up that I understood what had happened.
It was Beau.
Beau Cross. In the corridor of the hospital where my daughter was. Of course.
He hadn't flinched at the collision. His eyes were on me. There hadn't been time to put a face on, and for some reason, he looked thinner.
“You are the man who slept on our couch.” Bonnie was at full volume. She’d been holding the question for a month.
Beau smiled. “I am, yes.”
“My mom was very mad about that.”
His eyes moved off her face and onto mine. “Really?” The corner of his mouth lifted. “She didn’t tell me that.”
He wasn’t alone.
The dark-haired man from the auction — the one who’d proposed by the windows — was two steps behind Beau with his hand at the lower back of the woman who’d said yes. The woman had her head tilted half back, laughing at something the sandy-haired man behind them was just finishing telling her. The older woman in cream — paler than at the auction, paler at the cheeks, walking slower because she was holding a paper cup of tea filled to the lid — caught up at the back of the group.
The whole group stopped because Beau had stopped.
The woman who’d said yes at the windows came around Beau and put out her hand to me. Her smile was warm, natural, and entirely unprepared for what she was walking into.
“Hi, I’m Suzanne. It’s nice to meet you.”
