Jules' week has been long and arduous, the stress of it wraps around her bones like sinew. Even the walk from her car up to her second floor apartment makes her joints go stiff. Halfway up the stairs, she pauses to bend over, resting her forehead against the forearm outstretched on the banister. The headache she's been nursing all day has settled behind her eyes and flares into an incredible, blinding fire every time she allows herself to acknowledge just how tired she is. Being tired is not usually so foreign and unwelcome. Her work is so deeply satisfying at times that it feels natural to work until her body dictates when it's time to take a break. On the nights before her days off, she loves knowing the day is over and the darkness stretches out in front of her, full of opportunity. After this week, the only thing she can imagine is a small bottle of Advil and the expensive comfort of a pillow top mattress.

The city has changed so suddenly and so quickly that the hospital is having trouble keeping up with the demand. Emergency and trauma are always so full, and the effects of it all are starting to trickle into her department as well. There are so many new children in the ward that she's started to look forward to her days in oncology. It's heartbreaking every day, but it's a consistent heartbreak. The faces and the stories are familiar. It's too much to see children in the hospital anyway, but seeing them come and go is worse. Letting them go back out into the world vulnerable and scared feels like releasing them right into the teeth of some waiting wolf. She wants to keep them longer to make sure that wounds heal completely rather than sending them home with care instructions, but space is limited.

Then there is the headache. It's come and gone for the past three days, always making itself known in the most inopportune moments. At work, she's distracted by it, taking a few moments longer to respond to pages. After a spell of vertigo in the nurse's station the day before, she's concerned her symptoms are more serious than she'd like. A hundred scenarios play through her mind before resting on the greatest finality. It's an end she doesn't dare acknowledge as a possibility. She supposes her son has another parent to help him grow into a good person, but no one could do it the way she could. She also supposes she might spend too much time in a hospital and all of this is proof. Even the headache and the vertigo could be psychosomatic, a symptom of stress and fatigue over crying children. She feels selfish over the whole thing and pushes it out of her mind to wait until she, once again, feels too tired to resist it.

Standing up straight, she slowly climbs the remaining steps to her floor and unlocks her front door, her hands shaking in wake of the headache. Before pushing the door open, she takes a long breath and tries to arrange her face into something pleasant and grateful. The neighbor's teenage daughter is curled on the couch, her attention on the flickering light of the television. Jules vaguely recognizes the actors' voices like she'd seen the show when she was younger but can't quite place it now. With a smile and an outstretched twenty dollar bill, Jules accepts the updates about her son's night. He'd refused to eat his fish but begged for a second helping of broccoli. He'd played with his Duplo set until it was time for bed. He'd brushed his teeth after much diplomatic bargaining over the number of bedtime stories. It hurts to miss these traditions, and Jules tries not to compare her son's upbringing to her own as she sees the babysitter out. Once she is gone, the apartment descends into a stillness broken by the rattle of the refrigerator ice maker and the quiet, high-pitched laugh of a three-year-old definitely not in his bed.

Jules finds Jeremiah sitting up in her bed, his little legs under blanket and a little paperback book on top of that. He's staring at an illustration of an octopus, one of his new favorite things after a trip to the aquarium, his finger tracing the eight tentacles, mesmerized. For a moment, her smile is not forced. God, how could a person be so wonderful and not even know or care what it means to be wonderful? Jules is at the foot of the bed in two long strides, toeing off her shoes as she crawls onto the mattress next to her son. Jeremiah only looks over at her before lifting the corner of the book to show her. Jules just nods at him with another smile as she reaches her arm out and curls it around his little body to slide him closer to her into a cuddle. He wiggles a bit before dropping his book and curling into her body, his head resting in the space just below her chin.

"You're supposed to be sleeping," she whispers against his hair, pushing it away from his temples.

"Octopus."

"Sleepypus." Jeremiah laughs against her collarbone and she laughs with him, giving him a little squeeze. Normally, she would only allow him to sleep in her bed after a nightmare as long as he tried to sleep in his own bed first, but she felt it would be nice to break the rules a bit now.

"Mumma sleepy?" Jules responds to her son's question with a little nod, and she watches him as he shifts so his head is next to hers on the pillow. He reaches up and places his fingers over one of her eyes with a little shushing noise, and she knows to close her eyes for him. He whispers to her then, telling her a meandering story in half-formed child's English as he strokes her forehead just as she does for him every night. She can't follow the plot, perhaps because there is none, but it's wonderful and she's grateful for such a small, joyful end to the day.

She whispers it as the weight of sleep begins to tingle at her shoulders and neck: My Gerry.

The feather light stroking stops at her forehead and she opens her eyes, confused. The pain in her head at that moment is so strong that her vision goes white for a moment and she hears nothing else except the beating of her heart. And then Jeremiah's face comes into view and he's frowning deeply at her.

"No Jerry. 'Miah! Mumma!" It takes a moment to calm her son down enough that he will curl against her again, confusion and shame flooding every inch of her consciousness as he did so. How could she have done that? Why would she have called him by that name? He hated every nickname, insisting to any person who dared give him one that they call him by his real name despite the fact that he was unable to say it completely himself.

Jules cuddles him in quiet apology until she feels his little limbs get heavier as he falls slowly into sleep. As close as she was to sleeping herself just a few moments before, she can't bring herself to do it now. Her body is awake now with an alertness that can only come from complete bewilderment and shame. Slowly, she extricates herself from her son's sleepy grip and walks to the window, pushing it open and leaning her head against the mesh screen, taking a deep gulp of night air.