Thank goodness I had one on me. I didn’t do outreach; in fact, I didn’t do anything with the Sunshine House except read their monthly report and cut them a check accordingly. I held it out to her. She looked from it to me to Annabelle, then she snatched it as if afraid I was using it to trap her. She looked at it and then me. Her gaze was suspicious. “You work for them?”
“Yes,” I said. I wasn’t about to explain that I was just the money behind the program. I felt Annabelle staring at me, but I kept my gaze on the woman. “We can help you. We’ll find you housing and get you some job training and child care. You don’t have to be trapped in this.”
She shook her head as if I were as dumb as a brick. “Don’t I? We were kicked out of our apartment yesterday. All this time I thought my husband was working, but it turns out he lost his job two months ago and he’s just been sitting in a bar every day, drinking. Everything we had, everything we worked so hard for, he just drank it all away.”
She broke down then, sobbing. I thought again that I might be ill. It was too much. I glanced at the boy. Tears were coursing down his cheeks. He was me. I’d lived his life, but I’d be damned if I’d walk away and leave him to live mine.
“What’s your name?” Annabelle asked with a gentleness that wouldn’t even cause a ripple on still water.
“Emily,” the woman choked out through her sobs. It broke me.
“See that hotel, Emily?” I asked. I pointed to a standard businessman’s travel hotel across the street. “We’re going to get you set up there for the night or for however long it takes for the Sunshine House to find you something more permanent. Would that be all right?”
She sobbed some more then she gave me a suspicious look. “Why? Why would you help me?”
I glanced down at Elijah, who was openly crying in relief as he pressed his cheek to the top of his baby sister’s head.
“Because I’ve lived your life. I’ve walked in your shoes,” I said. She gave me a doubtful look, and I pushed aside my usual reluctance to talk about my past. I knew Annabelle was listening, and I didn’t even have the capacity to feel the usual shame I harbored about my childhood. It was nothing compared to the moral imperative I felt to get this family to safety.
“When I was his age.” I jutted my chin in Elijah’s direction. “My parents were junkies, and they abandoned me and my sister, leaving us to fend for ourselves most days. I was homeless, scared, hungry, because my parents were more interested in their next fix than they were in being parents. I was completely alone and there was no one reaching out to help me or my baby sister.”
I paused to shove aside all the memories that were so thick, they were suffocating me. “I’m telling you, you can climb out of it, but you’re going to have to be very brave. Can you do that, Emily? Can you do that for them?” I asked.
That got through. Emily glanced at her children and nodded. Annabelle stepped forward, herding the mother and her children to the crosswalk. I brought up the rear, hoping my body didn’t decide that this was the perfect moment to collapse like a wet noodle. I didn’t have Jackson. I didn’t have my wheelchair. I started to feel the panic rise. Instead of dwelling on it, I stared at Elijah, still carrying his baby sister. I would not fail him. Not now.
The hotel associate was happy to take my card and keep it open. We walked the family of three to their small suite, and I scrawled my personal number on the back of the Sunshine House card and told Emily and Elijah to call me if they needed anything. Meanwhile, Annabelle managed to finagle the kitchen into sending some food up to their room.
When they were all safe and sound, Annabelle and I left them to rest. We were walking to the bank of elevators when Elijah came tearing out of their room. My first thought was that something bad had happened and I started forward, prepared to call an ambulance, but that wasn’t it.
Elijah threw himself at me with all the strength in his scrawny little boy body. He wrapped his arms about my waist and buried his face against my shirt. Sobs wracked his frame, and I reflexively hugged him close while making soothing sounds, just like I used to do with Lexi when our parents were out getting stoned, leaving us home alone, hungry and terrified.
“Thank you,” Elijah said. He lifted his face to look at me. His brown eyes glistened with tears, and the tip of his nose was pink. “Thank you for saving us.”
My heart cracked in two right then and there. As fast as he’d arrived, he turned and ran back to their room, slamming the door behind him. It was too much. I was gutted. I leaned against the wall, feeling the shock waves of the evening ripple through me. My breath was shaky, my heart was pumping hard, and I could feel the tingles start in my fingers and toes. Wouldn’t it just be fitting to stroke out on Annabelle right here, right now?
“Nick, are you all right?” she asked. “You look pale.”
“I’m fine,” I lied. “Let’s get out of here.”
I wasn’t fine. As we crossed the street, I felt the entire left side of my entire body give out. One minute I was walking, and the next, my leg couldn’t support me, I felt like my heart was going to explode out of my chest, and I was going down.
“Nick!” Annabelle screamed, and reached for me.
But the pavement got me first, and my face bounced off the hard ground like a cantaloupe.
* * *
I woke up, lying on the curb with Annabelle and, improbably, ManDee crouched over me.
“Ambulance is on its way, pumpkin, don’t you worry,” ManDee said. He patted my arm. “I saw you from the window, and I thought, What the hell is wrong with that guy? And the next thing I knew, you went down, right in the road. I ran over to help your girlfriend get you up on the curb.” He fanned himself with a prettily manicured hand, sporting several very large rings. “I think you scared a year off me.”
I could hear a siren increasing in volume and assumed it was for me. I glanced at Annabelle. Her eyes were enormous in her face. She was shaking. I wanted to comfort her and assure her that I was fine. I fully expected not to be able to find the words or to be able to speak them, but aside from the thumping pain of my forehead, I found I could speak.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “One minute you were beside me and the next you went down hard. Oh, Nick, I—”
Whatever she was about to say was cut off by the arrival of the ambulance. Damn it. I would have given a lot to hear what she had to say.
ManDee and Annabelle made room for the paramedics. When I realized I hadn’t had a stroke and could, in fact, move all of my limbs, I let them look me over but refused to go to the hospital. I wasn’t going to take a bed from someone who needed it because I’d had a fainting spell and bumped my noggin, for fuck’s sake.