Eric, nestled in the tiny nanny’s arms, suckled the bottle noisily while staring with wonder into Branwyn’s eyes.
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“He like you,” Ahn said with a nod and a smile.
Branwyn tried to figure out how old the woman was. She couldn’t tell by the weathered face or the tiny features. She smiled at the woman and held out her arms, taking the behe-moth baby to her breast.
Eric dropped his bottle and stared open-mouthed at the woman holding him. He made a soft one-syllable sound and put his hands on her face.
“Ga,” he said.
“Ga,” Branwyn replied with a smile.
Suddenly Eric started crying, hollering.
“You stop that crying right now, Eric Nolan,” Branwyn said in a stern but loving voice.
Abruptly baby Eric stopped, surprise infusing his beautiful, brutal face.
Ahn smiled and hummed.
“That’s the first time he’s ever obeyed anybody,” Minas said softly so as not to break the spell. “Usually when he cries, there’s no stopping him.”
“That’s because Eric and I understand each other. Don’t we, boy?”
Eric laughed and reached out for Branwyn’s face like a man come in from the cold, holding his hands up to a fire.
Ahn made breakfast while Branwyn, Eric, and Minas went to the drawing room on the first floor. There they sat on the divan that faced a picture window looking out on the Nolans’
exquisite flower garden.
“It’s so beautiful, Doctor,” Branwyn said while bouncing the baby on her lap. “You have more flowers than the florist I work for.”
“My wife loved flowers.”
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“So do I.”
Minas was looking at his son’s white body beaming against Branwyn’s dark-blue dress and darker-still skin.
“Don’t you think that you should call me Minas or honey or something like that?”
Branwyn laughed and so did Eric.
Then a deep sadness invaded the woman’s face.
“Did I say something wrong?” Minas asked her.
“I shouldn’t be happy like this when my baby can’t even be comforted by my arms.”
Minas opened his mouth to say something, but again he could not find the words.
Eric opened his mouth too, and Ahn — who had just entered the room carrying a platter of sliced fruit, cheese, and bread — had the distinct feeling that the baby could have spoken if he wanted to. But Eric just stared at the black woman with the intensity of a much older child.
“I have to go to the hospital . . . , Minas.”
“I’ll drive you,” the handsome doctor said.
O n th e ri de, the doctor said again that Thomas would never get better as long as he was in that bubble.
“He needs his mother’s arms and the sun,” Minas told her.
“That’s what I told Dr. Settler, but he said that with Tommy’s lung like it is he’s liable to get an infection and die if they let him out.”
“He won’t grow in there,” Minas said, “and he won’t get better.”
“But what will happen if I take him out?”
“He’ll be your baby in your arms.”
“But will he die?”
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“I don’t know. He might. But one thing’s for sure . . . he’ll never grow to be a man in the ICU.”
Th e doc tor drop pe d Branwyn off at Helmutt-Briggs and then drove back to his home in Beverly Hills. Before he was in the front door, he could hear Eric’s howls. Minas found the boy and Ahn in the nursery. She was holding him, and he was battering her face with pudgy fists. The boy had been screaming at the top of his lungs until his milky skin turned red.
“He won’t stop,” Ahn told the doctor.
Minas took the boy in his arms. Eric fought and struggled and screamed and shouted and hollered. Hot tears flooded out of his eyes. Every now and then he’d stop long enough to be fed, but as soon as the bottle was empty,
