Page 118 of Delta

"What about her, baby?"

“If anything happens to me—"

Wrong thing to say—she gets angry. "You're not allowed to talk like that, Rush."

"I've got…three holes in my…my chest."

"We’ve got you, bro. You're less than fifteen minutes from a hospital by air." The voice is male, American, and decisive. He's not guessing. "You'll live."

"Fine, then." I let my eyes close. "Don't tell Eliza until after Disney."

"Rush—"

"Nah. She ain't ever had a vacation. Let her have fun."

There's a warm rush, then, or maybe a cold rush. A tingling. The pain fades, replaced by a drowsy euphoria.

"Ohhh, that's nice, that is,” I murmur.

"Morphine, bud. The good stuff."

"Bryn?"

"Yeah, baby?"

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"What I did."

"I know."

"What is love…?" Not sure why I'm singing the fragment of the song, but I am.

Bryn laughs—god, I love her laugh.

Oh bugger, I think I'm passing out.

19

19: ELIZA

He's been in and out of surgery for two weeks, repairing his lungs, getting them to reinflate, getting him off supplemental oxygen. He's out of it, most of the time. Barely aware of his surroundings, exhausted, in perpetual pain.

Yet, when Richard and Evelyn arrive with Eliza, he somehow manages to gather himself together for his daughter.

If I wasn't in love with the man already, seeing him with his daughter would have done it. He uses the wired remote to lift his bed upright as the door opens—Eliza's voice can be heard from halfway down the hallway, singing an adorable little ditty about going to see her daddy.

I'm sitting on the far side of the bed with my hand resting on his thigh when the door swings open. A fireball of a child bursts in, a half-pint firecracker in a gauzy pink taffeta explosion of a princess dress, the train trailing behind her muddy and torn. She's got a pink wand in one hand with a massive blue plastic jewel in the center, which flashes with light every time she waves it. In her other hand is a stuffed rabbit with long floppy ears, one eye missing, and the other an old brass coat button. Her hair is as black as Rush's, but it's an inch of patchy new growth coming in after radiation treatment.

"…Daaaaaaddy, Daddy, going to see my Daaaaaddy!" she sing-songs, bursting into the room with a dramatic flourish of her wand. "Tah…DAH! I'm here, Daddy!" Dahhh-DEE!

"C'mere, Lizzy-Lovey,” Rush says, his voice breathless and soft and ragged. "I need at least eighty-seven squeezes and a hundred kisses."

Her wand lowers slowly to her side as she sees him in the big hospital bed, wires and tubes in a tangled snarl, looking haggard and weak and tired. "D-Daddy?"

He scoots over in the bed, each movement eliciting a wince and a groan he does his level best to hide. "C'mere, Lizzy-Bean. C'mere. Daddy's okay. I'm alright. Just come here."