Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 2

a joy and he wouldn't have given her up for the world, but he wished he could share the responsibility. It seemed that he would have no time for anything but cooking and parenting for the next eighteen years. It was as if he had become middle-aged overnight.
    Then, ten days before Lucy the nanny was due to start back with them, Nicole got sick.
    He thought at first that she might have some kind of stomach virus. She would take a couple of sips of milk and then turn away from the bottle. She grizzled all the time but she didn't like to be picked up or moved around. She wasn't sleeping. He put her in the office as usual, thinking she would have got over it by the time the restaurant closed, but she wasn't. He called NHS Direct and they asked if she had a fever. Her forehead felt warm but not dangerously hot. They wanted him to take her temperature, but all he had was a cooking thermometer.
    He sat up with her all night. In the morning he took her to the doctor, who told him to monitor her temperature and fluid intake. He bought the right kind of thermometer and phoned them again in the afternoon, but it was Saturday and the surgery had closed at midday. So he tried the emergency doctor, who said that if she wasn't drinking more by the morning he should probably take her to hospital because of the risk of dehydration. This time he didn't leave her in the office. He took most of the evening off from the restaurant and stayed upstairs with her.
    She fell asleep around midnight and so did Jules, crashing out on her bedroom floor. They didn't wake until six. For six hours she hadn't drunk anything. She was crying, a strange high whine that didn't stop. He panicked and called an ambulance.
    He thought they would pump some fluids into her and let him take her home. Instead they ran some tests and told him that Nicole had meningitis.
    ****
    He called Mark. If he'd had to explain why, he would probably have said it was because Mark and Nicole had been so close, but he didn't really do it for their sakes. He did it because he was so scared he couldn't think. He had to talk to somebody and Mark was the one he always called.
    Mark said, "Meningitis? But that's serious. Oh, Jules."
    "There are two kinds," Jules said. He'd learned a lot in the last few minutes. "One is viral. That's okay. If it's that she will be fine, they are taking care of her and it will pass. The other is bacterial. That's very dangerous. A lot of babies die." His voice started to shake. He made the effort to control it, to pretend he was talking about some other baby, not Nicole. "If they survive they can have brain damage or other problems, or they can be okay."
    "Is that the kind that she has?"
    "They don't know. It takes two or three days. They have to wait for the culture to grow in the lab. But if it's bacterial, she could die in that time, so they are her giving antibiotics already."
    "Oh God, Jules."
    There was a long pause. Jules thought, I'm frightened, Mark, please come . He couldn't say that. "If you want to see her—"
    "Of course I want to see her. Can I come now?"
    A wave of relief washed over Jules. He told Mark to drive carefully— meaning it— and sat down to wait beside Nicole's cot, a plastic box like the one he'd first seen her in, in Saint-Herbert.
    It was strange to see Mark again in a place like this. He seemed more confident, somehow, despite his obvious anxiety about Nicole. He hugged Jules and peered into the cot. It was hard to say if she recognized him: she hardly seemed to notice Jules, let alone anybody else. Her cry was high and painful and she was still resisting being moved or touched.
    "I was thinking, how did she catch it?" Mark asked. "Can't they tell from that which type it is?"
    "There are no other cases from our town. They say a lot of people carry the infection without getting sick. It probably came from one of the staff."
    "She's strong," Mark said. "She'll make it."
    "I hope so. And if she doesn't, I hope I won't be alone when they tell me, this time."
    He didn't know what made him say that. He hadn't intended to ask for anything. But Mark took his hand and said, "I can stay tonight if you need me."
    Jules gripped Mark's hand gratefully. "But your work?"
    "I can travel from here in the morning."
    One of the nurses saw their clasped hands and without even blinking she said to Mark, "Are you his partner? You can both stay, you know. Only one person can sleep here on the ward but we can book you a room in the parents'