Chương 2
Then back at Claire.
“Claire, I’m asking you.”
Claire felt tired all the way into her teeth.
“I had a baby.”
Susan didn’t react immediately.
“My daughter,” Claire said. “I remember holding her. My sister says someone took her out of my records.”
“I said somebody paid to erase her,” Margaret corrected quietly.
Claire stared at her. “That distinction matters to you?”
Margaret looked down.
Susan pulled the visitor chair closer to the bed but did not sit.
“Do you remember when you delivered?”
Claire tried.
There was a room.
Not this room.
Cream walls. A clock. A nurse whose purple glasses kept slipping down her nose.
Rain against glass.
Or maybe a shower running.
No.
She shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you remember the hospital?”
“I thought it was here.”
Susan and Daniel exchanged a glance.
Claire caught it.
“What?”
Daniel said, “You were transferred here.”
“From where?”
He hesitated.
Margaret stood.
“Don’t answer that.”
Susan’s expression hardened. “You need to step outside.”
“No.”
“Margaret.”
“No.”
Claire had almost never heard Margaret use that tone with hospital staff. With telemarketers, yes. Insurance companies, certainly. A roofing contractor once. Never a nurse standing beside Claire’s bed.
Daniel said, “Her transfer paperwork says Hawthorne Women’s Center.”
Margaret’s shoulders dropped.
Claire searched her memory for the name.
Nothing.
Daniel continued. “Your admission diagnosis here is post-procedure hemorrhage following an incomplete pregnancy loss.”
Claire looked down at her abdomen.
A coldness spread through her that had nothing to do with the room.
“Pregnancy loss?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“I’m telling you what the chart says, not what happened.”
“I heard her cry.”
“I understand.”
“I held her.”
Daniel nodded.
“I believe you heard and felt something. I’m not making a conclusion beyond that.”
Margaret gave him a look almost grateful enough to be insulting.
Claire saw it.
“You think I imagined her?”
Daniel answered carefully. “I think there is a serious conflict between what you remember, what your sister just said, and what your medical record currently shows.”
“I didn’t imagine six pounds eleven ounces.”
Daniel glanced at Margaret.
“No,” he said. “That part concerns me.”
Susan asked Margaret to step into the hall again.
Margaret refused again.
This time Susan called hospital security.
The word security seemed to exhaust whatever argument Margaret had prepared. She sat in the gray chair, elbows on her knees, and stared at the floor.
Claire watched her for almost a minute.
“You packed my clothes.”
Margaret nodded.
“Why?”
No answer.
“Were you taking me somewhere?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“A hotel first.”
“First?”
Margaret rubbed her thumb over a worn seam in her jeans.
“Then probably my place.”
“Probably?”
“I hadn’t figured everything out.”
“That’s not like you.”
Something close to a smile touched Margaret’s mouth and vanished.
“No.”
Daniel asked Claire whether she wanted Margaret removed.
Claire almost said yes.
The word reached the back of her teeth.
Then she looked at the suitcase.
At Margaret’s hands.
At the loose strand of dark hair near her cheek.
“No,” Claire said. “Not yet.”
Margaret’s eyes lifted.
Claire hated the relief in them.
“Daniel,” Claire said, “can somebody tell me if I gave birth?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out.”
“I don’t mean later. I mean physically.”
Susan answered. “A physician can examine you and review your labs and imaging. There may be signs consistent with recent delivery, but we need to be careful about what those signs prove.”
“Get the doctor.”
Susan nodded.
Daniel stayed.
A security officer arrived, then another. Neither had the movie-cop posture Claire expected from television. One was an older man with reading glasses hanging from his collar. He asked whether anyone had been threatened.
Claire said no.
Daniel pointed to the disconnected call cable.
Margaret said, “I kicked a plug out of a wall. I didn’t threaten anybody.”
The officer looked at Claire.
“Do you feel safe with her in the room?”
Claire wanted to say she had felt safe with Margaret in every room for twenty-three years.
Instead she said, “I don’t know.”
The older officer nodded as though that answer made perfect sense.
He asked Margaret to wait in the corridor while the medical team evaluated Claire.
Margaret stood.
Before she walked out, Claire said, “Did you see her?”
Margaret froze.
“My daughter. After I passed out.”
Her sister turned.
“Yes.”
“Was she alive?”
Margaret’s face folded for one second before she got control of it.
“Yes.”
Claire’s breath stopped.
Margaret whispered, “She was alive.”
The security officer guided her into the hallway.
Claire looked at Daniel.
He did not offer reassurance.
She was grateful for that.
A physician named Dr. Patel arrived ten minutes later, accompanied by Susan. She was small, direct, and probably younger than Claire, though the silver streak near one temple made age hard to guess.
She pulled the curtain even though Margaret was already gone.
“What I’m about to do is examine you,” she said. “I’ll explain before I touch you. If you want me to stop, tell me.”
Claire nodded.
The exam was uncomfortable and humiliating in the plain way medical things often were, without drama. Blood pressure cuff. Abdomen. Questions about bleeding. Questions about pain. Questions about milk production that made Claire stare at the ceiling.
When Dr. Patel gently asked whether Claire had noticed breast tenderness, Claire started laughing.
It came out as three breathless sounds.
Susan looked at her.
Claire covered her eyes with her forearm.
“Sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize.”
“It’s just ridiculous.”
“What is?”
“I apparently have to prove I had a baby by whether my bra hurts.”
No one laughed.
Claire lowered her arm.
“That wasn’t funny.”
“It was a little funny,” Susan said.
Claire laughed again, once.
Then she cried without warning.
Not loudly.
Tears slid sideways into her hair while she stared at the wall.
May you like
Dr. Patel waited.
When Claire could speak again, the doctor explained that several findings were consistent with very recent childbirth. She would not say more until she had reviewed imaging, medication records, and the transfer notes.
