012: Same Pain

Camille's POV

Adrian's skin was hot enough to feel from the doorway.

I crossed the room in three strides and found him worse than I'd left him — cheeks flushed dark red now, lips gone slightly dry and cracked, his small chest working hard and fast for air that didn't seem to be doing enough for him. His eyes were open but glassy, unfocused, sliding toward me and then away again like he couldn't quite hold onto where he was.

Carolyn stood pressed against the headboard, sunglasses abandoned somewhere on the floor, her hand wrapped so tight around his wrist like she could hold his fever down by force of will alone. Tears streaked down through this morning's careful mischief, and she didn't wipe them away, like she'd forgotten crying was something you were supposed to hide.

"He stopped talking," she said, voice cracking clean in half. "He was talking before and now he's not talking, Mommy, why isn't he talking—"

Megan sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed, book closed for once, forgotten entirely, her own small hand smoothing Adrian's hair back over and over in a motion she'd clearly copied from watching me do it a hundred times.

Aldric stood by the door, and for the first time since I'd known him, he wasn't performing bravery at all — his face had gone open and frightened and very young, tears sliding down without a single fist raised to fight anything.

"He said his head hurts really bad," Carolyn told me, voice thin, none of this morning's theatrics left in it. "I told him to squeeze my hand if it hurt too much."

"He squeezed really hard," Megan added quietly, still stroking his hair. "I counted. Four times."

"Is he gonna be okay?" Aldric's voice barely made it across the room.

"If not, I'm gonna beat up whatever's making him sick"

"Mommy." Carolyn's hand found my sleeve, gripping hard, her whole small body trembling. "Is what happened to Nancy going to happen to Adrian too?"

The room went silent around that name the way a held breath goes silent.

I hadn't told them much about Nancy — only the bones of it, only enough that they'd know they had a sister once and that she was gone, careful never to hand them more weight than four-year-old shoulders should carry. I hadn't expected the question to arrive like this, sideways and unguarded, straight into the center of the one wound I'd never fully let close.

For one long second I couldn't make my voice work at all.

"No." It came out rougher than I meant it to, and I had to stop, breathe, start again, kneeling down so I was level with all three of their faces instead of looming over them with whatever had just cracked open behind my ribs. "No, baby. Nothing like that is going to happen to Adrian. I promise you that. I need you to hear me say it and believe it."

"You promise?" Carolyn searched my face like she was checking for a lie the way children always could, better than adults ever gave them credit for.

"I promise." I pulled all three of them into my arms at once, Megan's wet face pressed into my shoulder, Aldric's small fists curling into the back of my sleeve, Carolyn's whole body shaking against my side. "Adrian is going to be okay. The doctors are going to help him, and I am not leaving that hospital until he's better. Do you hear me?"

They nodded against me, one after another, not because the fear had left but because they trusted me enough to borrow my certainty even when I wasn't sure I fully owned it myself.

Monica appeared in the doorway seconds later, breathing hard, hair coming loose from its pin.

"His fever's climbing, he's stopped talking," I said, already lifting Adrian carefully into my arms, his head lolling heavy against my shoulder in a way that made my stomach drop straight through the floor. "He needs a hospital. Now."

"The car's already out front." She fell into step beside me without asking a single unnecessary question, which was one of the things I'd learned to love about her over five years — Monica in a crisis wasted no time on anything but solutions.

"I want to come," Carolyn said, chasing us down the hall, voice breaking, Megan and Aldric right behind her.

"Not this time, baby." My own voice shook now, no matter how hard I fought to hold it steady.

"But he's scared," Aldric said, and his voice cracked on it, the fierce fists from a minute ago gone soft and helpless.

"I know." I stopped just long enough to look at each of them properly.

"That's exactly why I need you three to be brave for me and for him. The second I know something, you'll know it too."

They didn't stop crying. Neither did I, not really, not until the car doors closed and there was no one left to be strong for but myself.

***

The hospital swallowed Adrian the second we crossed the doors, a team materializing fast, gloved hands and clipped questions and a gurney moving down a hallway that didn't wait for mothers to catch up.

"You'll have to wait here, ma'am."

I sat down hard in a plastic chair that felt, absurdly, like the same plastic chair from five years ago, and pressed both hands flat against my thighs like it would hold anything together at all.

My phone rang. Monica.

"Talk to me."

"They've taken him back. I don't know anything yet." My voice came out thinner than I wanted it to.

"Listen to me carefully." Monica's tone was calm in the deliberate way she used when she needed someone else to borrow it. "I'm calling the head of pediatrics myself in the next five minutes. Whatever happened five years ago — I will not let it happen again. Do you hear me, Camille? Not this time."

"Okay." I closed my eyes. "Okay."

That's when I saw them.

The automatic doors slid open and Olivia came through first, and for a moment I almost didn't recognize her — hair wild, mascara tracked down both cheeks in ruined black lines, sobbing so hard the sound carried across the entire waiting room. Kyrian was half a step behind her, carrying a small boy no older than four, Kyrian's exact jaw, Olivia's dark hair, crying and limp against his father's shoulder.

"Please," Olivia was saying to the intake nurse, voice completely stripped of the ice I'd heard on the balcony, nothing left in it but raw, unguarded terror. "Please, somebody help him, he fell, he hit his head so hard, please—"

Something ugly and complicated turned over in my chest at the sight of her like that — a woman who'd once ordered three men to end a pregnancy without a flicker of hesitation, now falling apart in a hospital lobby over her own son's scraped skull. So you're allowed to be afraid, I thought, watching her hands shake as she gripped Kyrian's arm. You're allowed motherhood being hard when it's yours.

Of all the days. Of all the hospitals in this entire city.

The phone froze against my ear.

"Camille?" Monica's voice, distant, tinny. "Camille, are you there?"

"I'll call you back." I lowered the phone slowly, hand shaking, and gripped my knee to steady it.

They couldn't see me. Not Adrian either. Not like this — no explanation ready, nothing between me and the exact wrong questions at the exact wrong moment. I was already moving, ducking into the first open doorway I found, a supply alcove smelling of bleach and clean linen, my back pressed flat against the wall.

I typed to Monica instead, thumbs clumsy. They're here. Olivia and Kyrian. Their son.

Three dots appeared, disappeared, appeared again. In a call I can't leave for another twenty minutes. Hold your position.

Twenty minutes might as well have been a year.

I scrolled through my contacts with a hand that wouldn't fully steady, past names that could do nothing for me right now, until I landed on the one person who could walk into this hospital and make an entire room's attention bend toward her instead of me.

The phone rang twice before she picked up.

"Verena." I kept my voice low, urgent, pressed close to the wall like the bleach-scented dark could hide the shake in it. "I need your help. It's urgent."