Page 86 of Woman on the Verge

She pats his arm and then places her little hand on his forehead.

“Maybe you have a fever,” she says.

She’s learned about all things medical from YouTube. She was mesmerized by a video featuring a Barbie doll having a C-section. Maybe YouTube isn’t all bad. Maybe it will be partially responsible for her future career. Dr. Grace Sanchez. It has a nice ring.

“Are you really sick?” I ask him, doing a horrible job of hiding how inconvenient this is for me.

It’s hard to have sympathy. I am always the one who gets sick, rarely Kyle. When the girls were in day care, I was sick approximately twice a month with various colds and stomach ailments. One time, I puked into the cup holder of my car during my evening commute home from work, suddenly overcome with norovirus. There have been two upsides to me staying home with the girls: 1) I no longer have to flog them over many hurdles to get out the door for day care in the morning, and 2) there is much less sickness. It’s been months since I’ve had to force a syringe of antibiotic goop into anyone’s mouth.

“Stomach thing,” he says. “Probably something I ate.”

Which is plausible. He’s a big fan of getting DoorDash from questionable fast-food establishments. He does look a bit green around the gills, as my dad would say.

“Poor Daddy,” Grace says.

Liv has lifted her head from me to look at her father. Sick people are fascinating spectacles to young children.

“I’ll be fine, just need some rest,” he says.

This is my cue to usher the girls out of the bedroom. I want to roll my eyes because I know that if I had whatever bug is plaguing him, I would be going about my usual duties, not lying in bed.

“Come on, girls,” I say.

They file out of the room in front of me, run ahead to the stairs.

“Should I cancel my trip this weekend?” I ask Kyle.

The idea of not seeing Elijah fills me with intense despair.

“I don’t know,” he says, wincing as he clutches his stomach.

“Okay, well, I’ll need to tell Merry and—”

“Nic, chill,” he says. “It’s probably just a twenty-four-hour bug. We can figure it out tomorrow.”

I hate when he tells me to chill, but I bite my tongue, refrain from my usual admonitions.

“No dinner for you then?” I ask.

He grimaces. “No.” He clutches his belly again, making me aware of the extent of his misery.

“I’ll bring you some ginger ale,” I say, because I’m not a total bitch.

After I put the girls to bed, I can hear Kyle vomiting in the master bathroom. It is not looking good for this weekend. I go to the living room, make myself comfortable on the couch, assuming it will be my bed for the night. I text Elijah.

I have bad news.

He replies immediately, as he usually does:

Oh no. What?

I’m not sure I can come up this weekend.

I always thought that phrase “heart sinking” was a melodramatic cliché, but I can really feel something in my chest free-falling.

Him: Nooooooo

My thoughts exactly

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