“Please,” she whispered to the child, “please drink, please, please.”
Owen slowly lowered himself to the floor so as not to startle her and spoke as one speaks when one wants one's voice to be an outstretched hand in the darkness.
“Hi, honey. It’s Owen. You asked for help, and you did the right thing.”
The girl blinked at him through wet lashes, as if trying to figure out if grown-ups still meant what they said.
“This is Rowan,” she managed to say, carefully shifting the baby, “and he’s my brother, but I watch him when Mommy’s sleeping, because Mommy’s always tired.”
Owen's eyes moved across the room without taking their eyes off her for long, because he saw empty bottles lined up near the sink, some full of water, others with a thin, pale liquid, and on the floor near the couch was an old phone with a video paused on the screen, the title large enough to read: “How to Feed a Baby When You Have No Help.”
A seven-year-old girl was learning to become a mother on her own.
“Where is your mother right now?” Owen asked kindly.
Juni lifted her chin toward a hallway that seemed darker than the living room, as if shadows had gathered there.
“In her room,” she said, swallowing hard, “she said she just needed a nap, but it’s been a long time and I didn’t want to disturb her, and I tried, I really tried, but she kept getting lighter.”
The room at the end of the corridor
Owen first radioed for an ambulance, because the baby's breathing seemed shallow and his little chest was heaving as if every breath required effort, then he asked Juni a question that seemed both necessary and impossible at the same time.
“Can I hold Rowan for a minute, so I can help him?”
She hesitated, because she had been the only one holding him together for days, and letting him go would probably have felt like jumping off the edge of a cliff, but finally she transferred the child into Owen's arms with the careful seriousness of someone handing him something priceless.
Rowan weighed almost nothing.
This hit Owen so hard that it made his stomach clench, because even without a scale he could tell this was anything but normal, and as he held the baby close to his chest, he struggled to keep his voice steady.
“Stay here, okay? The paramedics are coming and we'll take care of him.”
Then he walked down the corridor, opened the last door, and found a woman on the bed, fully dressed, her shoes still on, her hair disheveled against the pillow, and her face marked by deep shadows of tiredness, as if sleep were the only place she could sink into without being asked to get up again.
He touched her shoulder and spoke firmly.
“Ma’am, you need to wake up.”
Her eyes widened in confusion that quickly turned to fear when she saw the uniform, and she sat up too quickly, blinking hard as if the room wouldn't stay still.
“What… what happened?” he gasped. “Where’s Juni? Where’s my little girl?”
“They’re taking him to the hospital,” Owen said, watching her expression crumble as the words sank into her mind, “and we’re going too.”
The hospital that didn't seem calm
To learn more, read the next page >>
To see the full instructions for this recipe, go to the next page or click the open button (>) and don't forget to share it with your friends on Facebook.
