34.

Dr. Evans said he wanted to keep Ian in the hospital overnight. There was a single room open in Pediatrics at the end of the hall.

“You should go home,” I said to Will when we got to the room. “Get some sleep.”

He looked at the single bed, at the sole chair where Dad had already parked himself. “You going to be okay?”

“Just bring him a new onesie when you come tomorrow,” I said. “The long-sleeved, blue, striped one. And maybe some socks.”

Will kissed my cheek, then Ian’s. “Hang in there, little guy,” he whispered on his way out.

I held Ian, looked at the soaked bandages and winced. Clear fluid was normal, the doctor had said. Normal. Dad leaned forward in the chair, reading my mind, and it hit me with a rush how glad I was to have that sage, stuffy, older lifeform that was my father perched in the corner. “It’ll heal,” he said. “The feeling Dr. Evans gave was that it looks worse than it is, thank God.”

“I know,” I said.

He forced a tired smile. “You should call Mom.”

“You know how she is with gore.”

He nodded, like he was enjoying some personal, fond joke about her. Then he closed his eyes and rested his head against the orange leather seat while I dialed Mom.

“How serious do they think it is?” she asked. Her TV blared in the background.

“Can you turn that down?” I asked, hugging Ian closer. “They said it’s second-degree burns.”

“So he won’t need a skin graft, thank God.” I heard the TV go silent, and her voice sounded all of a sudden oversized and echoey. “But he’ll probably have scarring. I hope for his sake it’s not a real deformity. Are you sure you don’t want to switch hospitals? Lenox Hill is really the only one in this city worth its salt.”

“No, Mom, we’re fine,” I said. “They know what they’re doing.”

“I hope so,” she said. “Will’s there, right?”

“Yeah,” I lied.

“Okay.” She hesitated. “Do you want me to come?”

“You don’t need to,” I said. “We’re getting out tomorrow morning.”

“Good,” she said quickly. “Call me when you get home.”

When I looked up, Dad was watching me on the phone, playing with the curtain cord. “Well, I guess I should head out,” he said. “Let you guys get some sleep.” Change fell out of his pocket as he stood up, and it rolled all over the floor. He looked to see if it had woken Ian up. “Sorry,” he whispered, gathering the coins. “Call me if you need anything, okay?”

“Thanks,” I said as the door swished closed. I angled the small task lamp on the side table away from us, then turned it off. I carefully lay Ian down into the same plastic box he was wheeled around in when he was born, and I lay flat on the bed. It hit me how recently we were all there and how different things felt now. A nurse peeped through the door, saw me staring at the ceiling and went away. I felt a weird, jumpy urge to see if Ian was okay, and as I stood up, watching his blanket move up and down as he breathed, something happened. I stood over him and thought about how purely, wholly good he was and how I was never going to be able to protect him from or make up for all of my mistakes. I wondered what the hell I’d done, not just with the accident, but the whole thing. Having him. What had I done? Why had I brought someone into this world? I imagined Ian in a calculus class, struggling like me and feeling like shit, and I imagined someone making promises to him, about a job or something else, and him getting his hopes up and the person not making good on it. I imagined Ian loving someone like I loved Will and that person dropping dead on the street. I thought about blood and accidents until a cyclone of grief mashed me up and I wondered how the hell I’d ever thought it was okay to disappear that summer with Vanessa. How could I have done that to them? A trolley rolled down the hall outside my room, one of its wheels catching and banging on every turn. It stopped at my door and a guy peeked in.

“No trays, ma’am?” he asked.

I shook my head and the smell of old food seeped into the room as sobs ripped through me. I thought about Mom and Dad. Was life nurturing, in some inexplicable way, or was it just a never-ending string of losses in different shapes?

I whispered to Ian, “Remember when you were born and I couldn’t stop saying, ‘Oh my God?’ ” He slept on his back with his head turned all the way to his shoulder. At that angle his head looked like it could have spun right around. Did infants have ligaments? Connective tissue? I lay down on the bed and fell asleep in a splinter of light shining from the bathroom door, thinking, This sadness, whatever it is, somehow binds me to Ian, and as a result, to this world, like it or not.