Chương 5
"Claire, wait."
"Don't."
"I'm trying to help you."
"Then start by telling me why my father has a surveillance photograph of Daniel."
Samir rubbed a hand over his mouth.
"I need to see it."
"No."
"If it's what I think it is—"
"What do you think it is?"
He did not answer.
The imaging door opened behind him.
A technician appeared with Daniel in a wheelchair.
His wrist had been wrapped temporarily, and both crutches rested across his lap.
"Mom?"
Claire went to him immediately.
"I'm here."
Daniel looked past her at Samir.
The change in him was instant.
His shoulders pulled tight.
One hand closed around the aluminum shaft of his crutch.
Samir saw it too.
"Daniel?"
The boy stared at him.
"Mom."
Claire crouched beside the wheelchair.
"What?"
Daniel's voice was barely audible.
"That's the man."
Samir stopped moving.
Claire looked at her son.
"What man?"
Daniel pointed at Samir.
"The one Grandpa didn't want me to talk to."
Claire rose slowly.
Samir's face had gone gray.
"Daniel," he said, "you remember me?"
Daniel nodded.
"You were with Dad."
Claire could hear her own heartbeat.
"When?"
Daniel's eyes moved between them.
"Before he died."
Samir looked toward the far end of the corridor as if calculating the distance to something Claire could not see.
Then he reached into his scrub pocket, took out his phone, and shut it off.
"Claire," he said quietly, "you and Daniel cannot go home tonight."
Claire's first impulse was to tell him he had lost the right to give her instructions.
The words reached her throat and stopped there when Daniel whispered, "He said that before."
Samir looked at him.
"What did I say?"
"That we couldn't go home."
Claire felt the purse beneath her arm become suddenly heavy.
Daniel stared down at the temporary wrap around his wrist.
"You said Dad had made a mistake."
Samir pulled an empty plastic chair away from the wall and sat as if his knees had ceased cooperating.
The technician glanced between them.
"Dr. Patel, should I take him back to exam three?"
Samir answered without looking away from Daniel.
"Yes, please."
Claire put both hands on the wheelchair.
"I'm going with him."
"Of course."
The technician began pushing, but Samir stood.
"Claire, give me five minutes."
"You've had four years."
His face tightened.
"Five minutes can keep you from making a very bad decision."
"That's exactly the kind of sentence people say when they want me to make their decision instead."
Daniel reached backward and caught two fingers of her hand.
"Mom."
She looked down.
"I want him to come."
Samir blinked.
Claire did not hide her surprise.
"Why?"
Daniel's eyes stayed on the floor.
"Because maybe I'll remember."
Claire hated the sentence enough to want to refuse it.
Instead, she followed the wheelchair into exam three and watched Samir close the door behind them.
A nurse came in before anyone could speak, took Daniel's blood pressure, asked him to rate his pain, and complained mildly when the computer froze.
For ninety seconds, the room was occupied by blood-pressure cuffs, passwords, and the question of whether six meant "hurts a lot" or merely "hurts more than five."
Daniel decided on five.
The nurse told him the radiologist was reading the films and left.
Samir remained beside the sink.
Claire stood between him and Daniel.
"Start."
Samir glanced at the closed door.
"Evan called me the afternoon of his accident."
Claire's jaw tightened.
"Car accident."
Samir looked at her.
"What?"
"You said accident like there was only one."
For the first time, he seemed to understand how little room she intended to give him.
"His car accident."
"Why did he call?"
"He wanted medical records."
"Whose?"
"Daniel's."
Daniel looked up.
Claire's anger shifted direction so fast it left her dizzy.
"Why would Evan need records you had access to?"
"He didn't need records I had."
Samir rubbed his palms against his scrub pants.
"He needed records he believed St. Matthew's had."
"Believed?"
"There was a study here when Daniel was little."
Claire stared at him.
"He was never in a study."
"Not officially."
The air conditioner clicked on above them.
Somewhere outside the room, a cart rattled over a threshold.
Claire said, "You have about ten seconds before I walk to the nurses' station and ask them to call hospital administration."
"You should call them."
"Then why are you whispering?"
"Because I don't know who already knows."
That landed differently.
Samir looked at Daniel.
"I don't want to do this with him in the room."
Daniel's fingers tightened around his crutch.
"Then don't talk about me like I'm not here."
Samir lowered his head briefly.
"Fair."
Claire sat on the edge of the second chair but kept her purse in her lap.
"Keep going."
"When Daniel was four, he had those unexplained episodes."
Claire remembered the sudden weakness, the fevers that vanished before appointments, the months of specialists telling her that children could produce terrifying symptoms and then simply grow out of them.
"Evan was obsessed with finding a cause."
"He was his father."
"I know."
Samir's answer carried an old irritation, and Claire heard it.
"You thought he was overreacting."
"I thought he was becoming impossible."
Daniel shifted.
Samir noticed and corrected himself.
"Your dad and I fought about it."
"What study?"
Claire asked.
"A pediatric inflammatory-response project funded partly through the Vale Foundation."
The name struck harder than the medical language.
"My father's foundation?"
"Yes."
Claire's hand went to the zipper of her purse.
Samir shook his head once.
"Don't take it out."
"Stop telling me that."
"The hospital has cameras."
"So?"
"So if Richard is frightened enough to hurt Daniel in a ballroom full of witnesses, stop assuming embarrassment is the thing he's frightened of."
Daniel went pale.
Claire stood.
"You don't get to say that in front of him."
"Mom, he did it."
"I know."
"No."
Daniel's voice shook.
"Grandpa did it because I took the picture."
May you like
Claire turned to him.
"Did he know you had it?"
