Page 10 of Second Chance Fate

Sue Ann Perkins owned the café in downtown Hope Falls. She was one of the only people, other than the folks at Golden Years, who Taylor had interacted with. Sue Ann cornered her in the pharmacy once. She gave her a coupon for free chili and half off a banana cream pie. She never went to use it, though, but she remembered speaking to her.

“No, sorry. Your prescriptions are ready; we need to go pick them up.”

Taylor watched as her son’s shoulders dropped and his expression deflated. She hated always being the person who spoiled his fun. Technically, they could pick up the prescriptions in a couple of hours, but she needed an excuse to get out of there.

On the way out she smiled and waved at Noah, who introduced himself when they arrived. He was one of the younger teens who was working in the children’s church. Instead of going to the lobby, Taylor went out the side door, hoping to avoid the crowd.

As they stepped out of the church and into the crisp spring air, she took a deep breath and hoped she hadn’t just completely ruined everything. She and Owen had walked to church, so they made their way down to the riverside, leaves crunching beneath their feet. He was quiet, and she could tell that he was upset they hadn’t stayed, but he was starting school tomorrow, and after pretty much just being on bed rest for the past eight months, even if she hadn’t wanted to leave, it still would have been a lot.

“So did you have fun? Did you make any friends?”

Taylor felt bad for her son. The only friends he’d made in town were over eighty and lived at Golden Year Retirement Home, or they were his nurses at the hospital. She knew he missed hanging out with kids his own age, which was why it was good he’d be going back to public school starting tomorrow…even if it did freak her out.

Owen shrugged. “Are you going to have more kids?”

The question caught her off guard, and she wasn’t quite sure how to respond. She felt a tug at her heart. It wasn’t ever something they’d discussed before.

“Uh, I don’t know…” her voice trailed off. “I haven’t really thought about it.”

“But what if you get married?” Owen pressed. “Then do you think you would?”

Since he wasn’t dropping it, she figured she owed him an honest answer. “I don’t know if I’m ever going to get married.”

“Is it because when you were with Martin and he was…” Her son didn’t finish his sentence. He bent over, picked up a rock, and skipped it across the surface of the river.

Owen didn’t like to talk about Martin. She’d tried to talk to him when they left, and she’d even taken him to see a therapist in another town, but he didn’t really open up about his feelings towards her ex.

“Yes,” she replied honestly.

Owen picked up another rock and threw that one. It skipped six times across the surface of the water. “But if you were with someone nice, do you think you would?”

“I don’t know.” She glanced down at him. “Why? Do you want a brother or sister?”

Owen lifted his left shoulder in a shrug. “I don’t care about me… I just don’t want you to be alone.” He looked up at her, and she could see concern brimming in his big brown eyes. “I’m getting older, and, you know, I’m sick a lot, and what happens if?—”

“Stop. Don’t.” She hated it when he talked like that. No kid should have to think about his own mortality like that. She shook her head. “Youdonotget to worry aboutme. That’s the rule. I’m the adult. It’s my job to worry aboutyou, not the other way around.”

Owen’s nostrils flared, which was a tic he had whenever he was stressed. He hopped up on a fallen tree branch and walked across it with his arms out to his sides for balance.

Stress was extremely detrimental to Owen. It was bad for his health in general, but specifically for his heart condition and epilepsy. When Taylor was speaking to his team of specialists about his reintegration back into public school, one of the things they stressed, no pun intended, was the importance of making sure to try and keep his triggers of anxiety to a minimum. She hadn’t thought going to children’s church would be one. Unlike her, he thrived insocial situations. He was a social butterfly.

Trying to lighten the mood, she referenced a running joke they had about a book calledLove You Foreverread in the hospital during one of his long stays in the ICU. “And plus, it doesn’t matter how old you get, remember I love you forever; I like you for always.”

A smile spread on Owen’s face as he rolled his eyes, and his lips twitched before his head fell back and he laughed. Inthe book, the mom sneaks into the son’s room and rocks him when he is an adult man. Although Taylor understood that a lot of people loved the book and found it very endearing, the illustration looked funny to them at a time when they desperately needed comedy.

His laughter echoed in Taylor’s ears, soothing her frazzled nerves like a balm. When he got to the end of the branch, he climbed up on a low stone wall, his arms still stretched out to maintain his balance. The rest of the walk down by the riverside was spent with him jumping on anything he could use as a balance beam to walk on.

She kept a watchful eye on his coloring to make sure he wasn’t getting pale or flushed and that the outline of his lips wasn’t turning blue. She listened closely as he inhaled and exhaled for changes in patterns, shallow breaths, or wheezing.

As much as she loved seeing Owen feeling good enough to be active, it was a double-edged sword. If he overdid it, the complications could be catastrophic. His health was like a house of cards or dominoes. One wrong move and the entire thing would collapse.

Something as simple as pushing himself just a little too hard could snowball rapidly. It could go from needing his fast-acting inhaler to a nebulizer treatment to a trip to the emergency room within minutes.

If Owen burned off more insulin than usual and his blood sugar dropped, he could get dizzy, lightheaded, have blurry vision, pass out, have a seizure, and go into a coma. If he didn’t have enough insulin, it could cause blurry or tunnel vision, slurred speech, confusion, and loss of coordination.

Those were the immediate risks; over the long term, his diabetes could cause nerve damage, organ failure, and strokes. Both his asthma and diabetes affected his heart disease and epilepsy. Taylor wanted to give Owen the most normal life shecould, but she also wanted him to be alive. It was a constant balancing act, one that she always felt like she was failing.

After stopping by the pharmacy to pick up Owen’s prescriptions, they passed Brewed Awakenings Coffee Shop, and Taylor did a double take when she noticed a “Help Wanted: Flexible Morning/Early Afternoon Hours” sign in the window. The coffee shop was right off Main Street, just two blocks from the elementary school, which would make it easy for her to drop Owen off at school and then head straight there, not that anything in Hope Falls was that far from anything else. She’d been inside the coffee shop once and met an employee named Manny, who was really nice. And she’d met Viv, who owned the coffee shop with her sisters, because she regularly visited the retirement home.

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