Close To You

Chapter 8

"Hey, Eleanor!" Sean called as he unlocked the front door, coming into the living room. Toys were scattered everywhere, and the television was on. Though it was unusual that the house had went uncleaned, Sean had figured maybe Eleanor had been having a bad day. She had, after all, been complaining of the test she was going to have to take. Still, he couldn't quite shake the feeling that something was wrong. He walked through the house, his nerves growing shaky, when he heard Skylar crying.

"Skylar?" he called, now scared. The child ran out from her bedroom and into Sean's arms, nearly scaring the life out of him. He picked the little girl up, hugging her. "Where's mommy?" Skylar pointed to her own room, and Sean quickly ran in there. Ellie was sprawled out on the floor, a stuffed animal still in her hand. He rushed to her and picked her up, holding her in his arms.

"Ellie...baby, wake up...come on, Eleanor, talk to me." She did nothing, only lied there, helpless. Sean looked at Skylar, who was rubbing tears from her eyes. "How long has she been like this?" Skylar looked as if she were really trying to think of the right answer.

"Just a few minutes. It was scary," she added as an afterthought. Sean picked up his wife and, with his daugher trailing closely behind, put her in the car and drove to the hospital. The nurse, whom he recognized as the woman who had been overseeing Ellie's internship, was the first to see him.

"Oh my God, Sean, what happened?!" she asked, immediately taking a flashlight to the woman's eyes.

"I...I don't know. I came home and she...she was just lying on the floor..." The nurse nodded, then had the man behind her, Dr. Watts, Sean learned, put her on a stretcher to take her to the back. Sean started to follow when the nurse gently stopped him by putting her hand on his arm.

"I'm sorry, Sean, but you can't go back there. Just patients and doctors." Sean, helpless, tried to protest but it was no use and, finally giving up, accepted the clipboard she had been trying to hand to him. Sitting down in the closest chair, he began filling out paper after paper, shaking, and scared. Skylar sat beside him, kicking her feet with an innocence and total peacefullness that Sean envied. She looked up at her dad then, her eyes wide with honesty.

"Daddy? Is mommy gonna be alright?"

"Yeah...Mommy's gonna be fine." Skylar nodded, smiled, then yawned. "You sleepy?" She nodded again. He held his arm out, which she took and wrapped around her shoulders, leaning against his chest. "Don't worry, babydoll, mommy's gonna be fine." This time he repeated it for no other reason than to reassure himself.

Several agonizing hours later, the doctor finally resurfaced from the back, sitting down across from Sean, who was still half-awake. He suddenly became aware of nothing besides Dr. Watts, as that was, right now, the only thing that mattered to him.

"Well, we're not quite sure what caused her to pass out. It may have been exhaustion, it may have been the heat, but as I said, we're not exactly sure. What we do know, however, is that we're going to keep her overnight for observations, and we're going to be taking blood samples throughout the night to see if we can find the problem. I'm sorry we can't tell you anything now, but we want to neither give you false hope nor depress you." Sean, worried, asked what had been weighing on his mind for quite some time.

"Is..is there any illness that could cause her to do that?" The doctor inhaled, then let it out slowly.

"Actually, sir, there are many things that could cause it, but only a few are our options at the moment. At this time, it looks most like stress is what could be causing it, but there are some factors we've yet to see occur that would either confirm or reject this idea." Sean nodded, knowing that was all he was going to get out of the doctor. Dr. Watts shook his hand, then told him that he would tell him first thing in the morning whenever they learned anything.