Chương 3
“I knew,” she whispered.
Claire came closer.
“I know.”
“I knew.”
“You did a good job keeping them covered.”
Sophie pressed her lips together.
The tears finally came, silently.
Daniel did not tell her everything was all right.
It wasn’t.
He guided her into a chair.
Claire crouched beside her.
“What’s your sister’s name?”
“She doesn’t have one.”
“And your brother?”
“No name.”
Claire nodded.
“We can call them Baby Girl and Baby Boy for a little while. Hospitals are good at boring names.”
Sophie wiped her nose with the muddy sleeve of her dress.
“Baby Boy sounds dumb.”
“It does.”
“Baby Girl too.”
“Very dumb.”
Sophie looked at her.
“Can I see them?”
“As soon as we get you checked out.”
“I’m not sick.”
“You pushed a wheelbarrow farther than most adults would want to. Humor me.”
Sophie hesitated.
“What’s humor?”
Daniel looked away so she would not see him smile.
Claire said, “It means I’m a nurse and I’m pretending you have a choice.”
For a moment Sophie almost smiled again.
Mark watched from across the lobby.
The anger had left him.
What remained was worse.
He looked tired.
Not ordinary tired. His face had the slack gray cast of someone who had been awake too long and had finally reached the point where adrenaline no longer felt useful.
A siren sounded somewhere outside.
Mark’s head lifted.
Sophie stopped smiling.
Luis noticed.
“Sir.”
“I’m not moving.”
“Good.”
“I said I’m not.”
Luis remained where he was.
Mark stared through the glass doors.
“What if she’s dead?”
Nobody answered.
He looked at Sophie.
She turned her face into Claire’s shoulder.
Daniel stepped between them.
Mark whispered, “Jesus.”
Police arrived nine minutes after the kick.
By then the wheelbarrow had been pushed into a corner behind the reception desk, a strange rusty object among computers, rolling chairs, sanitizer dispensers, and a rack of hospital brochures. Mud had flaked from its tire onto the polished floor.
A janitor appeared with a yellow mop bucket.
He looked at the wheelbarrow.
Then at the security officers.
Then at Daniel.
“Do I clean around the crime scene?”
Daniel said, “I have absolutely no idea.”
The janitor sighed.
“Fantastic.”
It was such an ordinary response that Daniel almost laughed.
Police separated Mark from Sophie immediately. One officer took Mark toward a consultation room with Luis nearby. Another spoke briefly to Daniel and Claire. A supervisor arrived. A social worker was called.
The entire emergency department adjusted itself around the event.
That was what hospitals did.
A woman came in complaining of abdominal pain. A toddler vomited near the vending machines. A man with a bloody dish towel wrapped around his thumb asked the receptionist how long the wait would be. Somewhere beyond the double doors a monitor alarmed and was silenced.
No one’s private disaster stopped anybody else’s.
Daniel was halfway through examining Sophie’s scraped palms when the radio on the police officer’s shoulder crackled.
The officer listened.
His expression changed.
“They found the mother.”
Sophie stood so quickly the paper on the exam table tore beneath her.
“Is she awake?”
The officer glanced at Daniel.
Daniel hated that glance.
“Tell me.”
The officer lowered his voice anyway.
“She has a pulse. EMS is treating her.”
Sophie gripped the edge of the bed.
“Is she awake?”
“No.”
“When will she wake up?”
Daniel stepped closer.
“I don’t know.”
Sophie studied his face with unsettling attention.
“You’re a doctor.”
“Yes.”
“You’re supposed to know.”
“Sometimes I don’t.”
She looked down at her hands.
“That’s stupid.”
“Frequently.”
Claire, checking Sophie’s blood pressure, said, “He hates admitting it.”
Daniel glanced at her.
Sophie did not smile this time.
“They’re bringing her here?”
“Yes.”
“Can I go downstairs?”
“She’ll come through the ambulance entrance. We need to stay out of the way until the team has helped her.”
Sophie’s breathing changed.
Faster.
Claire removed the blood-pressure cuff.
“Look at me.”
Sophie did not.
Claire waited.
Eventually the girl lifted her eyes.
“Your mom is with people who know what to do. Right now the babies need the same thing, and so do you.”
“I don’t need anything.”
“Your hands are bleeding.”
Sophie looked at them as if surprised.
“They were already like that.”
“That doesn’t make them less bleeding.”
Claire washed the dirt from her palms.
Sophie hissed when the water reached the broken skin but did not pull away.
Daniel stood near the door and watched.
He had a daughter once.
Not in the sense that people sometimes said after a miscarriage or a pregnancy that ended before a room was painted. His daughter had lived for four years and three months.
Her name was Grace.
He almost never thought the sentence in full because the sentence led somewhere he had spent years learning not to go during work.
Grace had died from an undiagnosed heart condition on a Tuesday morning while Daniel was in the same hospital treating somebody else’s child.
No one had done anything wrong.
He had hated everyone for that.
Especially himself.
Claire glanced at him.
He knew she had noticed where his mind had gone.
She had worked with him long enough to recognize the quiet failures in his face.
He left the room before Sophie could.
In the hallway, he drank half a paper cup of water and threw the rest away.
Claire followed a minute later.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
“That wasn’t convincing.”
“I’m at work.”
“So am I.”
He looked through the narrow window in the exam-room door.
Sophie sat with her wrapped hands in her lap.
“What did the babies’ temperatures come up to?”
Claire told him.
“NICU?”
“They’re taking both. Girl’s breathing is shallow, boy is stronger.”
Daniel nodded.
Claire folded her arms.
“You’re doing the thing.”
“What thing?”
“The thing where you decide this child belongs personally to you because nobody else got there first.”
He looked at her.
“Thank you, Claire.”
“You’re welcome, Daniel.”
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“I’m not doing that.”
“You asked a seven-year-old about her breakfast to establish a timeline.”
