Chương 2
Every head turned toward him.
His jaw tightened.
For a moment nobody said anything.
Then Mark looked at the floor.
“Apartment four.”
The receptionist gave the address to dispatch.
Daniel stood slowly.
Mark rubbed his mouth with the heel of one hand.
“I was going back.”
Sophie made a small noise.
Not a sob. More like a breath that had caught in the wrong place.
Daniel moved half a step so Mark was no longer in her direct line of sight.
“You can explain that to the police.”
“I said I was going back.”
No one answered him.
The automatic doors finally slid shut.
The lobby became strangely quiet without the outside traffic.
A wheel on the abandoned wheelbarrow spun once, squeaked, and stopped.
Daniel had worked emergency medicine for eleven years. He had seen children dropped off by strangers, children carried in after car wrecks, children who walked into emergency departments holding towels against injuries adults could barely look at. He had learned not to assume courage where there might only be shock.
Sophie was shaking badly now.
That was not courage.
That was a nervous system that had run out of other ideas.
“Where are the babies?” she asked.
“Claire has them.”
“Are they dead?”
“No.”
Daniel heard himself answer too quickly.
He corrected it.
“They were both breathing when we brought them back. They’re very cold, and we need to help them. Claire is with them.”
Sophie stared toward the treatment doors.
“I put three blankets.”
“I saw.”
“The blue one kicks his feet out.”
“Does he?”
“He doesn’t like blankets.”
Daniel nodded as though that were useful medical information.
Maybe it was.
“What are their names?”
Sophie rubbed her thumb against a blister on her palm.
“Mommy said we shouldn’t name them until we got somewhere safe.”
Daniel did not know what to say to that.
Luis did.
The security officer had been standing near Mark, but he looked over at Sophie and said, “That makes sense.”
Sophie looked at him.
Luis shrugged lightly.
“My mother changed my name twice before I was a month old.”
The other officer glanced at him.
“That true?”
“No.”
Sophie blinked.
Then, unexpectedly, a tiny sound escaped her.
Almost a laugh.
Luis smiled once and returned his attention to Mark.
It lasted less than two seconds, but Daniel watched some of the rigidity leave Sophie’s shoulders.
An ambulance crew arrived to take the information for Emily Miller’s apartment. One paramedic knelt and asked Sophie whether her mother was upstairs.
“Second floor.”
“Elevator?”
“No. Stairs smell bad.”
The paramedic nodded as if unpleasant stairs were a standard navigational landmark.
“Is the door locked?”
Sophie looked toward Mark.
“I think so.”
“Do you have a key?”
She shook her head.
Mark said, “It sticks. You have to lift it when you turn the knob.”
The paramedic looked at him.
“You’ve been inside?”
Mark said nothing.
Luis’s posture changed almost imperceptibly.
The paramedics left.
Sophie watched the ambulance through the glass until it disappeared around the corner.
Then she whispered, “They went the wrong way.”
Daniel followed her gaze.
“They’re taking the faster street.”
“No. There’s construction.”
The receptionist overheard.
“She’s right.”
The woman grabbed the phone again.
For the first time Daniel looked at Sophie not as a frightened child giving fragments of information, but as the person in the room who had most recently made the journey.
“How did you get here?”
“With the wheelbarrow.”
“I mean what streets?”
“Marion, then the place with the buses, then behind the bank because the sidewalk by the pizza place is broken.”
Daniel turned toward reception.
“Tell dispatch.”
The receptionist did.
Sophie watched her carefully.
“Do they know about the fence?”
“What fence?”
“The blue fence by our parking lot. You can’t get the ambulance in from Marion.”
The receptionist relayed that too.
Daniel felt something unpleasant settle beneath his ribs.
Adults had been questioning her as if she were incidental.
She was not.
She had gotten two newborn infants across several blocks of city streets with a wheelbarrow while whoever had been caring for them lay unconscious.
“How long ago did your mom stop waking up?”
Sophie’s eyes moved toward him.
“I don’t know.”
“Was it light outside?”
“Yes.”
“It’s light outside now.”
“I know.”
“Had you eaten breakfast?”
She frowned.
“Cereal.”
“What kind?”
“Corn flakes.”
“With milk?”
“The milk smelled weird.”
Daniel suppressed the instinct to hurry her.
“Did Mom eat?”
“No.”
“Did she talk to you after breakfast?”
Sophie rubbed the hospital bracelet between her fingers.
“She said the babies needed to be warm.”
“What else?”
“She said there was money in the coffee can.”
Mark shut his eyes.
That was the first thing Sophie said that seemed to hurt him.
Daniel noticed.
“Did she tell you to come here?”
“Not then.”
“When?”
“Before.”
Sophie turned the bracelet over.
On the white plastic band, partly obscured by dirt, Daniel could read EMILY MILLER and a hospital identification number.
“When she got this.”
Daniel looked at the printed date.
Three days earlier.
He knew better than to interrogate her. He also knew a seven-year-old could lose details once adults repeated questions enough times. Police and child specialists would need her account uncontaminated.
So he stopped.
“Okay.”
Sophie looked almost offended.
“That’s it?”
“For now.”
“But you need to know.”
“We do. The right people are going to ask you, and I want you to tell them exactly what you remember. Not what you think we want to hear.”
Her forehead creased.
“What if I remember wrong?”
“Then say you’re not sure.”
“What if I forget?”
“That’s allowed.”
She looked at Mark again.
“Adults get mad when you forget.”
Daniel followed her gaze.
“Some do.”
Mark’s mouth tightened.
Before he could answer, Claire appeared in the doorway.
“Sophie?”
The girl turned.
“Both babies are breathing on their own. We’re warming them now.”
Sophie’s knees buckled.
May you like
Daniel caught her beneath one arm.
She did not faint. She simply folded as if somebody had removed a piece holding her upright.
