The nurse looked up at him with a weary expression. Was he really putting her through this? She checked the watch on her wrist.
“I have his insurance card. I have a letter from him that he gave me. A power of . . . something or other. And I can pay any deductible, or sponsor a new wing, or whatever it takes.” Patrick fished his wallet out of his pocket, as if that made any difference. He was still wearing gym shorts but had managed to throw on a tee. He looked a half step above homelessness at best, which was not helping his cause.
The nurse unwrapped a peppermint from the dish on the counter. “Are you on TV?” she asked skeptically as she popped the candy in her mouth.
“I was. I was on TV, yes.” He smiled weakly. “If that helps.”
“They play your show here every night.” She pointed at the televisions in the waiting room. “The reruns.”
“That’s right. I think, what, they air back-to-back episodes between ten and eleven?”
“Eleven and twelve. That’s when I know to take my break.”
Patrick offered a weak smile.
“You got old.”
Ouch. He ran his fingers through his hair in an attempt to make himself more presentable; he’d have to find a bathroom to wash the serums off his face. “Can we just wait and see what the doctor says? I’m sure the boy’s going to be fine. I’m sure I’m here only in an abundance of caution. I’m new at this.” Patrick pleaded with his eyes. “I’m thinking of two people’s health here. Please.”
The nurse studied his face as if deciding if he were famous enough to break protocol. “Take a seat, Rerun,” she finally said with a sigh.
Patrick pressed his hands together like he was praying and mouthed, Thank you. He collapsed in the seat next to a sullen Maisie. He glanced in her direction, but she didn’t say a word. “You okay?”
Maisie looked at her feet; she was wearing two different shoes. “I don’t like hospitals.”
“Your mom?”
Maisie nodded.
“They’re not all bad, you know. Hospitals.” Patrick sighed, scrambling for an example. His head hurt; there was a tiny person inside his brain kicking the back of his eyeball. If he were going to have an aneurysm, this was probably the worst time but best place. “You were born in one. That’s . . . good. Right? It’s where we met.”
“You met me at the hospital?”
“Yeah. I wasn’t going to. Fly all the way across the country. Babies don’t really do anything, you know. I didn’t see the rush. But your mom insisted and the show was on winter hiatus. She said I was Dad’s brother. Her brother now, too. I was family. And that’s what family does.”
Maisie scrunched her features together in the center of her face. “What’s ‘hiatus’？”
“It’s a break. Like, a vacation from regular life until things start up again.” Patrick saw a connection. “You’re kind of on a hiatus right now.”
“And you met me and you were happy you did?”
“Oh, god no. It was a lot of pressure on me. A lot of people watching me, which—don’t get me wrong. I normally like. But everyone was looking at me like you might somehow change me, and no offense, but we had just met.”
“Change you how?”
“That’s just it! I don’t know. Get me to settle down with someone, maybe. Put me on a more secure path in the wake of . . .” Joe. “But babies are scary!”
“No they’re not.”
“They’re not?”
“No.”
Patrick considered this counterpoint, but didn’t find the merit. “Well, I beg to differ. They’re really small, for one. You have to support their necks. And they don’t talk to you, they just scream. I never knew what you wanted. Which was, as it turns out, just fine with your mom. I don’t think she really wanted to let you go.” Maisie took his hand and held it. Patrick swallowed hard to clear his throat. “But everyone else. They just looked at me, holding you.” Patrick glanced up at the television. It was tuned in to KMIR, a local station. They played the same shaky footage, mostly captured on cell phones, over and over on a loop. Traffic lights swaying. Jars and cans knocked off the shelf at Albertsons. That sort of thing. Occasionally they mixed in some footage of a needle going haywire on whatever the machine was at Caltech that measured seismic activity, and put up a graphic of a tweet from seismologist Dr. Lucy Jones.
“Why are there earthquakes, anyway?” Maisie sounded completely depleted, like she was struggling to remain interested in something that terrified her an hour ago.