Free Surface by Stacy Robinson Page B

the present circumstances, it really was. What she wouldn’t give for just diabetes now.

C HAPTER 6
    S he remembered the moon peeking through the shades over Nicholas’s bed that night it all started, illuminating the silver stars on his ceiling and casting a strange glow on his then tiny nine-year-old face. His eyes were open and his brows were drawn tightly together in an angry V. Claire noticed a large, empty bottle of water on his night table as she sat down on the edge of his bed and stroked his hair.
    “I can’t sleep,” he said, his voice unusually high, almost whiney.
    “What’s wrong?” Claire looked at his heavy lids and the hint of black circles beginning under his eyes.
    “I’ve had to go to the bathroom like ten times tonight.” Nicholas sat up, knocking Claire’s hand away.
    She picked up the water bottle and wiped off the sweat ring from the night table with her fingers. “Did you drink this whole bottle before you went to bed? If I’d have drunk that much water, I’d have had to go to the bathroom like eleven times.” She poked his tickle spot and hoped for a smile, but the visible fatigue and irritability in his face worried her.
    “I was having a bad dream and I woke up real thirsty, so I went downstairs and got the water.” Nicholas sat up against the headboard.
    “What was your dream about?”
    “I was in the backseat of Dad’s car and we were driving to soccer practice and I didn’t have my ball because Dad threw it out the window.” His jaw clenched and his watery eyes narrowed.
    “You know Daddy would never really do that, don’t you?” She took Nicholas in her arms and hugged him tightly. “You’re going to be okay, buddy.” After a few minutes, Claire went to his closet and rummaged through the shelves, returning to the bed with a short-handled net, its rim decorated with dangling superheroes and dinosaurs.
    “What’s that?”
    “Your dream catcher. Remember?”
    Nicholas sat up and took it from her hands. He turned it over and over, running his fingers across the netting, swatting it through the air in front of him. Claire asked if he’d like to hang it over his bed again, for old time’s sake. Nicholas didn’t speak for a while; he just gripped the worn handle tightly, and she wondered if he was coming down with some kind of virus. She knelt beside his bed, and after a few moments Nicholas put it down and interlaced his long fingers with hers.
    “What does sublime mean?” he asked in that way that makes parents invoke words like precocious .
    “Sublime?” Claire sat back on her heels, “Where’d you hear that?”
    “On my radio, while I was trying to fall asleep.”
    “Sublime means something that’s beautiful and perfect.” She searched for more appropriate words. “Something . . . heavenly.” She climbed into bed next to him and spread his blanket over the both of them.
     
    The next morning Claire brought French toast sprinkled with powdered-sugar happy faces into the breakfast room where Nicholas was refilling his glass with orange juice. She placed their plates on the table and sat down across from him. He shoveled the French toast and some bacon into his mouth with unusual enthusiasm. After he plowed through a second helping and two more glasses of juice, Claire asked again if he felt all right, if he wanted to go to school—just to be sure.
    Around lunchtime, Claire received a phone call from the school nurse, telling her that Nicholas had been demonstrating some symptoms that concerned her, and had asked if there was a history of diabetes in the family. Claire grabbed her car keys and was out the door in a flash, grilling the nurse about other possibilities. She called Michael on his cell in Boston. And as she heard herself explain the nurse’s theory to him, she somehow knew it was the truth, that Nicholas did have this frightening thing.
    “Let’s not jump to any conclusions before you see the pediatrician, Claire,” he’d cautioned.