Justin cleared his throat. “Thank you. Thank you for doing this.”
“It’s not a problem,” the guy said, and Justin wished he could remember his name. Was it Dale? Darryl? He’d said it, back at his house, but Justin had missed it because he’d been having a goddamn breakdown or whatever the fuck that was. The guy had a nice voice, low and calm like he was talking to some spooked animal, and Justin wondered if it always sounded like that, or if Justin really was that pathetic. Yeah, probably the second one.
Justin sneaked a glance at the guy as they passed under another streetlight. He was maybe in his late thirties, though Justin was never great at judging age. He had a dark beard that hid the planes of his face, and long hair pulled back into a messy bun. More hipster than biker though, Justin decided. His dark hair was a little gray at the temples, and there were flashes of silver in his beard.
The guy caught Justin’s gaze in the rear view mirror and Justin looked down, his face burning, and rubbed Scarlett’s back gently.
He had nice eyes, Justin thought. Kind eyes.
It was only a short drive to the hospital. Nothing in Enterprise was far away from anything else.
“Thanks,” Justin said when they pulled up in front of the entrance, expecting the guy would just drive off again. Instead, the guy turned the ignition off and got out of the car.
He was taller than Justin, and broader as well, and Justin felt like a little kid as the guy ushered them into the hospital. He felt, not small exactly, but safe, like with this guy beside him everything would be okay. And that had to be his sleep deprivation and his stress talking, because Justin had been on his own since he was fifteen. He wasn’t a little kid who needed protection from the big bad world. He hadn’t been that in a long time.
Tonight was the fucking exception, okay? Tonight had been a disaster, but usually Justin wasn’t like that. His stomach clenched and his face burned at the thought of how he’d basically collapsed in a puddle of tears on his neighbor’s front porch, but from now on he was keeping his shit together.
A woman in pink pastel scrubs met them in the waiting room and thrust a clipboard towards the neighbor.
“She’s sick,” Justin said. “She didn’t stop screaming for hours, and now she’s like this.”
“Okay,” the woman said. She looked at the neighbor. “You get started on these forms, and we’ll take a look at the little one.”
The neighbor opened his mouth, and then closed it again and nodded. He took a seat in the waiting room. “Go on,” he said to Justin. “We’ll be waiting right here for you.”
Justin trailed after the nurse, throwing a worried look back over his shoulder. The neighbor was sitting in a chair, his long legs stretched out in front of him, his clipboard discarded on the chair beside him. Wyatt was sitting in the chair beside that one, silent and watchful as always. Harper was pacing, her face like thunder.
Would they…would they be okay with the guy?
“Okay,” the nurse said, leading Justin around a corner. “Let’s get you ready for the doctor, little one.”
* * * *
It took less than five minutes for the doctor to diagnose Scarlett with an ear infection and give her a dose of something to ease the pain. Ten minutes after she was slumped in Justin’s arms, breathing heavily as she slept. She was as heavy as lead, and so quiet that Justin’s eyes pricked with tears of relief. He listened carefully as the doctor explained how to give her the ibuprofen and amoxicillin he was prescribing her, and shook his head when the doctor asked if she was up to date with her vaccinations.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Probably not. I only just got her. Custody of her, I mean. I only just got that.”
He saw the nurse mouth the word at the doctor: O’Dwyer
The doctor’s expression shifted into one of realization, and Justin couldn’t help wondering how many times Mom had fronted up here with some imagined pain, writhing and wailing theatrically and seeking drugs.
“I’ll find out,” Justin said, unable to meet the doctor’s gaze. “About the vaccinations.”
Another fucking thing to add to the list.
When the nurse showed him back out into the waiting room, Harper had given up pacing and was sitting beside Wyatt. The neighbor was reading a magazine, but he put it aside the moment he saw Justin and Scarlett and rose to his feet.