Cardiomyopathy

“Nate darling, unfortunately, Daddy won’t be able to come.”

The look of disappointment that crosses the boy’s face right after is one that pierces her heart. She stoops down to his level and places a reassuring hand on his shoulder, mustering a sympathetic smile. “Darling, Daddy is busy, but as soon as he can, he’ll come and greet us, okay? He has promised that he’ll come very soon, so just give him a little more time.”

His face seems to brighten up slightly, but deep down, Mavis knows that her words did nothing to fill the hole that a father can fill in his heart.

But, she’s doing it for her boy’s good, and maybe, selfishly hers too.

If Lance Wesker realizes that she has a child for him, he’ll take the boy from her and it might involve a messy court battle that she has absolutely no money for, and if the world finds out that a woman like her, has given birth to a son for the nation’s husband, Lance, her entire reputation would be in the mud, and neither does she have a lot of courage to face anyone after that.

She has lost a lot already, adding Nathan to that never ending list will only be her ruin.

Mavis finds her way inside and freshens up, in about thirty minutes, she comes back out dressed in more casual clothes, prepared to take her boy out for some fun. “Nathan darling, come on.”

With a smile, she pulls her boy up from the chair where he’s finishing up with his homework, closes the book. “Would you like me to carry you?”

“No, I’ll walk, I’m fine.” He responds with a toothy smile, holding out his hand to be held however.

Mavis takes his hand and together, the mother-son duo leaves the house for a chicken shop down the street.

The shop is one they’ve been to a few times so as soon as they push open the door, the waitress waves them to a table at the back where they usually sit normally. Mavis helps her boy into the chair and sits opposite him.

“The usual?” the friendly waitress asks as she slinks by.

“Yes please.”

“You’ll have it in a minute then.” With a flourish, she whisks away with a steaming saucer full of fried chicken for another table of noisy customers.

“Mom…”

“Yes baby?”

“I learnt at school today that one of the richest men in the world is in our city, is that true?”

“Really? I did not know that. Who is he?”

“My teacher said he is Lance Wesker. I have the same hair color as him too, I felt like a rich boy when I saw his face.”

Mavis freezes for a millisecond before chuckling drily, “Wow…” She forces out, “That’s so cool, I did not know that, but darling, there are many black haired little boys out there, but you are solely Mommy’s precious black haired gem.” She reaches out and ruffles his hair gently.

“Will I ever get to meet him?”

The waitress approaches with their small platter of chicken and puts it before them, then she drops their cups of water as well. “Your special chicken specially made with love.”

Her words are all Mavis needs for reassurance before she removes a big thigh and drops it in front of Nathan. Forgetting his earlier curiosity and the sumptuous meal he hardly, hardly ever gets, he tears into the piece of chicken, a smile spreading across his chubby cheeks.

He chews it happily, swallows and turns to his mom. “Chicken tastes so good, it’s a pity I don’t get to have it often, I love it.”

“Don’t worry my love, once I put together the money for the surgery and it’s successfully done, I’ll personally make you the biggest platter of perfectly crispy chicken with its skin left on too, okay?”

Nathan nods happily, finishing the piece and reaching for another piece.

She’s short on funds but to see that happy, toothy and wide smile on her poor boy’s face, she’s willing to spend to her last dime. He’d been born seven years before with a congenital heart disease, upon a shit ton of visits and repeated visits to the hospital, she’d come to accept that her perfect little boy has Cardiomyopathy, and it is incurable, save for a transplant.

But to get a heart transplant is way out of her finance bracket… she’d lost every single thing seven years back, and all she had was Lance, only to lose him too, to another red-headed woman…

She snaps out of it as she bites into the crispy piece of chicken in her hand, her eyes watching as her boy starts on his third piece. She frowns subtly as she looks down at the chicken, the taste difference is uncanny, it’s the exact taste of the type of chicken she used to have before she had Nathan and had to adapt to eating ONLY plant based oils…

SHIT!

Just as it dawned on her to smack down the piece of chicken he has in his fingers and he looks up at her shocked, his breathing becomes loud, unsteady and ragged.

“Mom, my chest hurts…” he whimpers before a cough takes over his words. He doubles in two just as Mavis, panicking, flies over to his side and picks him up from the chair and lays him gently on the floor, performing urgent first aid on him. As the panicked movements unfolded, the waitress came running over, looking scared.

“What happ—“

“Call the ambulance!” Mavis says, trying to focus on getting her son to breathe properly.

The lady momentarily freezes, her eyes stuck on the boy.

“I SAID CALL THE FUCKING AMBULANCE!” She yells at her, revealing her wet eyes with unshed tears as her son convulses on the floor from the fried chicken. For as long as she’d been coming here, at most, twice a month, they know that they should always use plant based oils for her and her child, that has always been the staple and it’d been nice as her own job does not leave space for a lot of cooking, especially the long preparation of chicken.

But she’d tasted it earlier, and whatever that was, the chicken was not fried with their own special oil.

And Nathan had eaten quite a lot of it… she’d been careless!

The girl dashed away and called the ambulance with trembling voice that Mavis can hardly hear as she tries to keep her boy alive by tilting his head upwards so he can get some proper airflow down into his lungs and help with the circulation of his blood but it does not seem to be working.

Slowly… slowly… slowly, she watches as his breathing gets slower until she can hardly feel his breath on her fingers, as his pulse slows down.

Just as the poor boy shuts his eyes, unconscious or…further, forever unconscious, the ambulance pulls up in front of the restaurant. Within the next ten seconds, Nathan is lifted onto a stretcher and wheeled into the waiting van.

Mavis follows them teary-eyed as everyone in the chicken shop watches as she gets into the back, her boy’s hand tightly wrapped around her finger, the only pointer of the boy’s grasp on life.

But just as the ambulance doors close, driving off to the hospital where he has his own doctor as Mavis has managed to describe, his hands slowly slide down from hers coming to dangle limply on the edge of the gurney, the loud sound of her wails drown out the siren of the moving vehicle racing for the recommended hospital.