Chương 2
She was asking him whether she was allowed to be examined.
The paramedic placed the stethoscope against her back.
“Big breath for me.”
Sophie tried.
A small wheeze caught at the end.
“When did you last use the inhaler?”
Sophie’s eyes moved toward the staircase.
Vanessa was no longer there. One officer had taken her into the library.
Sophie lowered her voice.
“I don’t know.”
“Today?”
A pause.
“No.”
“Yesterday?”
Another pause.
“No.”
Adrian looked toward Maya.
Maya’s face tightened.
“How long?” he asked.
The paramedic glanced at him. “Sir, let me finish with her.”
Adrian pressed his lips together.
He hated being corrected in front of people.
The realization arrived almost absurdly, unwanted and familiar. His instinct in meetings, negotiations, even family arguments, had always been to regain control as fast as possible.
He stepped back.
“Of course.”
Sophie’s left shoe squeaked against the polished floor.
The ordinary sound nearly undid him.
He walked into the kitchen because he needed to do something with his hands.
A glass sat beside the sink. He filled it with water, drank half, forgot what he was doing, and set it down.
Maya came in a minute later.
She stood several feet away.
“I should have called you sooner.”
Adrian stared at the glass.
“Yes.”
Maya blinked.
Perhaps she had expected forgiveness.
He was not capable of giving it yet.
“I should have,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I was afraid she’d fire me.”
Adrian finally looked at her.
Maya’s shoulders were drawn tight.
“My mother lives with me,” she said. “She can’t work right now. I cover the rent. Vanessa kept telling us she could have us blacklisted with the agencies. I knew some of that was probably nonsense, but…”
She stopped.
Adrian leaned against the counter.
“And three nights ago?”
“I started recording because I thought if I had proof, I could make myself call someone.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
His jaw tightened.
Maya looked away.
“I called the pediatrician’s office this morning.”
That surprised him.
“What?”
“I didn’t give Sophie’s name. I asked what someone should do if a child with asthma was being denied medication.”
“And?”
“They told me to call emergency services if she was having trouble breathing and to report suspected abuse.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“Why?”
Maya rubbed her thumb across the edge of the phone case.
“Because I was scared.”
It was a simple answer.
Adrian disliked it because it was one he understood.
He had spent most of his adult life telling himself that fear was something solved by planning. You identified the risk, reduced it, transferred it, insured against it, delegated around it.
Maya’s fear had not behaved that way.
Neither, apparently, had Sophie’s.
Neither had his own.
“I kept thinking I needed one more thing,” Maya said. “Something she couldn’t explain away.”
Adrian stared toward the foyer.
“And today was that thing?”
“No.”
Maya’s answer came quietly.
“Today I realized there was always going to be one more thing.”
The paramedics recommended that Sophie be evaluated at the hospital, partly because of the wheezing and partly because of the injury to her wrist.
Adrian rode with her.
He almost told his driver to follow before remembering the driver had already left.
The police remained at the house with Vanessa and Maya.
As the ambulance moved through evening traffic, Sophie sat strapped into the smaller transport seat with Adrian beside her. His jacket remained around her shoulders.
She kept touching the zipper pocket where she had put the inhaler.
“You can hold it,” Adrian said.
“I know.”
“Okay.”
After a moment, she took it out anyway.
A traffic light turned red.
The ambulance stopped.
Sophie stared through the rear window at a man walking a golden retriever on the sidewalk.
The dog lifted its nose toward a planter.
Sophie watched until the light changed.
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
“Are you mad at Maya?”
He took too long to answer.
Sophie noticed.
“She helped me.”
“I know.”
“She gave me crackers.”
Adrian swallowed.
“When?”
“When Vanessa said I couldn’t have dinner.”
The ambulance seemed to contract around him.
“How many times did that happen?”
Sophie’s thumb moved over the inhaler cap.
“I don’t know.”
He wanted numbers.
Dates.
Facts.
His mind kept reaching for them because facts felt more survivable than the expression on his daughter’s face.
Instead he said, “You don’t have to remember right now.”
Sophie nodded.
Two blocks later she asked, “Can Maya still work at our house?”
Adrian looked at her.
“We’ll figure that out.”
“That means maybe no.”
“It means I don’t know yet.”
Sophie considered this.
“Okay.”
Then, so quietly he almost missed it, she said, “I like when you say you don’t know.”
Adrian turned toward the window.
Cars streamed past them in the opposite direction.
He had no response that he trusted.
At the emergency department, they waited.
That shocked him too.
Some irrational part of him had expected the doors to open and the entire hospital to rearrange itself around what had happened.
Instead there were forms.
Insurance information.
A nurse checking Sophie’s vital signs.
A television mounted high in the waiting room showing a baseball game with the sound off.
A toddler crying over a sticker.
A man holding an ice pack to his jaw.
Human misery remained democratic.
Adrian sat beside Sophie while she swung one foot several inches above the floor.
“Do you want something to eat?”
She looked at him first.
Then at the vending machines.
“Can I?”
The question scraped him raw.
“Yes.”
“What if dinner is soon?”
“You can still eat.”
She studied him.
“Even if I don’t finish dinner?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
He bought pretzels and apple juice.
Sophie ate three pretzels.
Then she folded the top of the packet closed.
“You can have more.”
“I’m saving them.”
“For what?”
She shrugged.
May you like
He did not ask again.
A doctor examined her wrist and ordered imaging to rule out a fracture. The injury turned out to be a severe sprain with bruising, not a break.
