Chương 3
“Consistent,” Claire repeated.
“Yes.”
“Not proof.”
“Not by itself.”
Claire turned toward the window.
Half-closed blinds cut the late-afternoon light into gray bars.
Outside, traffic moved on the avenue below.
People were going home from work.
Somebody would be deciding whether to buy milk on the way.
Somebody would be annoyed about parking.
Claire wanted to climb inside one of those ordinary problems and stay there.
“Can a baby just disappear from a hospital record?”
Dr. Patel said, “Not ordinarily.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“No. A legitimate birth generates multiple records. Maternal documentation, newborn documentation, medications, orders, identification bands, lab entries, billing events, state reporting. Those systems aren’t all the same system.”
“So Margaret’s lying.”
“Possibly.”
“Or somebody did something complicated.”
“Yes.”
Claire looked at Daniel.
He had been staring at her wrist.
“What?”
He pointed.
“May I?”
She held out her arm.
He leaned closer to the red mark around her right wrist.
“There was a band there.”
“I remember.”
“Your current admission band is on the left.”
“So?”
“Mother-infant matching bands are sometimes placed separately from the hospital ID band.”
Susan looked at him. “Daniel.”
“I’m not saying that proves anything.”
“But you recognize the mark.”
“I recognize that something plastic was removed recently.”
Claire stared at the narrow indentation.
Then she remembered blue numbers.
Not the numbers themselves.
Just the nurse tapping the band on Claire’s wrist and then the tiny band around the baby’s ankle.
Same number on both, Mom.
See?
Claire closed her hand.
“Find out who cut it off.”
Nobody answered.
“That can’t be impossible.”
Daniel said, “We can start with the transfer team.”
“Start now.”
He nodded.
For the first time since waking, Claire felt something other than fear.
It wasn’t courage.
It was irritation.
Sharp, practical irritation.
She knew that feeling.
It was the feeling she got when someone at the library branch where she worked insisted a missing book had been returned, and the system said otherwise, and everyone wanted to move on because the amount involved was trivial.
Claire was an assistant branch manager at a public library outside Columbus. Her job involved schedules, broken printers, patron disputes, supply orders, staff evaluations, and explaining to grown adults that no, a library card did not make public computers exempt from pornography filters.
She was not an investigator.
She was not brave.
She had once let a man shout at her for seven full minutes because interrupting him felt more difficult than waiting.
But she understood records.
She understood that systems were made of people, and people left fingerprints inside systems even when they believed they were being neat.
“Daniel.”
“Yes?”
“Who printed the transfer paperwork?”
He looked surprised.
“I don’t know.”
“Who scanned it?”
“I can find out.”
“Who changed the diagnosis from whatever Hawthorne sent to what I have now?”
“I don’t know that anyone changed it.”
“Find out whether anyone did.”
Susan said gently, “Claire, hospital administration will need to handle access auditing.”
“Then call them.”
“They’re being notified.”
“Call them again.”
Daniel’s mouth moved slightly.
Not a smile exactly.
He nodded.
“All right.”
Margaret was allowed back in after Dr. Patel finished, but one security officer stayed outside the open door.
She sat in the same chair.
The suitcase remained open between them.
Claire waited until the medical staff stepped away.
Then she said, “Who paid?”
Margaret looked toward the hallway.
“Not here.”
Claire almost laughed.
“You kicked out my call cord because you were afraid I’d tell somebody, and now you’re worried about privacy?”
“I’m worried about whether the people who did this still have access to your room.”
“They?”
Margaret pressed her lips together.
Claire’s anger sharpened.
“Stop deciding what I’m allowed to know.”
“I’m trying to keep you alive.”
“Am I in danger?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is my daughter?”
Margaret looked away.
Claire’s fingers curled around the blanket.
“You don’t know where she is.”
“I know who took her.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“No.”
It landed more quietly than Claire expected.
No screaming.
No burst of dramatic music.
Just a word.
No.
Claire stared at her sister.
Margaret leaned forward.
“There was supposed to be a car.”
“What car?”
“A transfer.”
“For who?”
“The baby.”
Claire’s voice turned flat. “My daughter.”
“Yes.”
“Say daughter.”
Margaret’s eyes closed.
“Your daughter.”
“Where?”
“I was told she was going to a private newborn care facility for forty-eight hours.”
“Told by who?”
“Eleanor Hart.”
The name entered the room like a smell Claire had not expected.
Claire looked at the wall.
Michael’s mother.
For months Claire had avoided saying her name.
Eleanor Hart had sent a Christmas card after Michael died. White paper. Embossed silver branches. No printed family photo that year.
Inside, in handwriting so controlled it might have been typeset, she had written: I hope time brings us both some measure of peace.
Claire had thrown the card away.
Then taken it out of the trash.
Then thrown it away again the next morning.
Michael Hart had been dead for eleven months.
A drunk driver had crossed a median outside Cincinnati and struck his car head-on while he was returning from a supplier meeting.
He had died before the ambulance reached the hospital.
He and Claire had not been together then.
Not exactly.
They had spent three years moving in and out of a relationship that had become embarrassing to explain.
They could be tender for weeks, vicious for twenty minutes, apologetic for days, and then surprisingly happy over Chinese takeout until the next unresolved thing resurfaced.
Claire discovered she was pregnant nine days after his funeral.
She told no one except Margaret for almost two months.
Eleanor had learned later.
Claire had never found out how.
“You let Michael’s mother take my baby?”
Margaret shook her head.
“No.”
“You just said—”
“I said she arranged it. I didn’t hand your daughter to her.”
“You helped.”
Margaret said nothing.
May you like
Claire looked at the suitcase.
The folded jeans suddenly made sense in a way she did not want them to.
