“Let’s not worry about that right now,” I tell them both and smooth Winnie’s hair. “How are you feeling?”
“Sleepy.”
She manages to eat some Jello before Rhett arrives with her blanket and Tanner sheep. The moment she cuddles it, she drifts back asleep. Rhett and Lauren head out after dinner, which consisted of cafeteria food Rhett smuggled up to the room.
Tanner doesn’t leave. He calls off work for today and tomorrow. I know if I insisted, he would leave but I also really don’t want him to. In fact, there is nobody else I want to be here with me.
It’s nearly midnight when Winnie stirs in her bed again.
“Mommy,” she says and stretches. “My legs feel runny.”
“Runny?”
She starts to giggle, and the giggle turns into a full-on belly laugh. Tanner and I just blink at each other then back at her.
“What’s so funny?”
“Runny,” she repeats.
Soon she’s buzzing, talking a million miles an hour, wanting to get up, wanting to run. Her words are loopy and her sentences nonsensical.
“My legs feel runny,” she says again and kicks them in the bed when the nurse we waved down comes to check in.
“Let me see if I can have the kids’ playroom opened to get those legs moving.”
Ten minutes later, we are sitting in the chairs along the wall of the playroom and Winnie is bounding around. Mr. Nurse, as Winnie is now calling him, is sitting with us, arms crossed and laughing.
“The Epinephrine has caught up to her,” he says. “She will probably sleep good here in an hour or so.”
And he’s right. Within an hour, we are back in the room and Winnie is sound asleep. A grown-man-snoring, drool-puddle, heavy-as-a-log kind of sleep. I join Tanner on the uncomfortable couch, right under his arm.
“Are they going to kick you out when they realize you aren’t actually my husband?” I ask.
He leans back, tips his hat over his eyes and pulls me in closer under his arm. “I’d like to see them try.”
25
Winnie didn’t sleep for more than an hour straight at a time. Sometimes she woke crying, other times just restless with her legs feeling “runny” again. When she would finally drift back off, I would just sit there, watching her. Watching her chest move, watching her eyelashes flicker in her sleep. Sometimes from her side, sometimes from under Tanner’s arm.
“Mom, I have to go to camp,” she says once the sun finally cracks the horizon.
She sits in her bed, eating her little breakfast of eggs and bacon, looking incredibly small.
“Honey you won’t be able to go today,” I tell her. “We need to get you home and resting.”
Her bottom lip wavers. “But the football game is today. Tan and I have been practicing.”
“I know. But I’m sure they will have football again this summer.”
“What’s wrong?” Tanner steps back into the room with vending machine coffees.
“It’s football day at camp and she’s sad she’s missing it.”
“How about,” he says handing me a hot paper cup. “Once you’re better, you and I can play a game of football? We will get Uncle Rhett to play, and even Jackie. We can make sure they both lose, how does that sound?”
She smiles but it doesn’t reach her eyes.
“Or we can play against your mom again and make sure she loses big this time.”
