Chương 2
“Has he been sick long?” he asked.
Clara rubbed Noah’s back. “A few days.”
“A few days like this?”
“No.”
“When did it get worse?”
“Last night.”
“Why didn’t you take him to a hospital?”
Caleb looked at him with sudden hatred.
Clara’s face closed. “Don’t.”
“I’m asking because—”
“Because you think the answer will make this less frightening for you?”
Ethan swallowed. “No.”
“You think I didn’t notice he was sick?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
A siren grew louder. Clara lowered her mouth to Noah’s damp hair. When she spoke again, her anger had drained into exhaustion.
“The shelter had an outbreak. They separated families with symptoms. I thought I could keep them together until the clinic opened.”
“You were in a shelter?”
“We were not sleeping under a bridge, if that’s your next question.”
“It wasn’t.”
“It was in your face.”
The ambulance stopped beside the sedan. Two paramedics approached with a stretcher, boots splashing through gray slush. The older one took in Noah’s color and immediately crouched.
“I’m Dana. What’s his name?”
“Noah Bennett,” Clara said.
“How old?”
“Six.”
“Any asthma, heart conditions, allergies?”
“He had bronchiolitis as a baby. No diagnosed asthma.”
Dana lifted a small oxygen mask. Noah turned his face into Clara’s coat.
“No,” he whispered.
“It’ll help you breathe, sweetheart.”
He shook his head and began coughing again.
Clara tried to hold the mask near him, but her hand was trembling too badly. Ethan reached instinctively.
She pulled it away. “Don’t.”
The word was not loud. It stopped him more effectively than a shout.
Dana looked between them. “Mom, you hold the mask. Sir, give us space.”
Ethan stood.
The other paramedic helped Caleb and Lily step back. Marcus moved to block the pedestrians’ view without touching anyone. The woman with the red umbrella had lowered her phone, but the person across the street continued recording.
“Can his siblings ride?” Clara asked.
“We can take one adult. Hospital policy.”
“They stay with me.”
“Marcus can bring them,” Ethan said.
Clara looked at him as if he had suggested handing the children to a stranger in an alley.
“No.”
“I’ll follow your ambulance. Marcus can drive behind us with Caleb and Lily, or all three of you can ride with him and I’ll take another car.”
“No.”
“Then tell me what works.”
She blinked. The question appeared to unsettle her more than his insistence had.
Dana secured the oxygen mask. Noah took a shallow breath, then another.
Caleb spoke without looking at Ethan. “I’ll go with Noah.”
Clara turned. “Caleb—”
“You and Lily come behind. I won’t let them take him anywhere.”
The paramedic’s expression shifted, almost imperceptibly.
Clara closed her eyes. When she opened them, she nodded.
Ethan stepped back as they loaded the stretcher. Noah’s hand emerged from the folds of Ethan’s coat and reached toward him.
“Are you coming?”
Ethan moved closer.
“Yes.”
Clara’s jaw tightened, but she did not contradict him.
The ambulance doors closed with a heavy thud. Marcus guided Clara and Lily toward the sedan. Clara stopped at the open rear door, staring at the leather interior.
“I’m not getting trapped in there.”
Marcus’s voice was calm. “The child lock is off. You can sit beside the door. I won’t lock it.”
“I want the window down.”
“It’s twenty-six degrees.”
“I want it down.”
Marcus lowered the window halfway before she entered.
Ethan took the front passenger seat. He had not sat there since Marcus began driving for him. Clara noticed but said nothing.
As the sedan pulled into traffic behind the ambulance, Ethan’s phone began vibrating continuously.
He switched it off.
Northwestern Memorial admitted Noah through the emergency department. A nurse led Clara and the children behind double doors while a security officer asked Ethan to remain in the waiting area until the staff understood his relationship to the patient.
“I’m his father,” Ethan said.
The words felt both true and fraudulent.
The officer looked at a tablet. “Are you listed as a parent or guardian?”
“No.”
“Then we need the mother’s consent.”
Ethan glanced through the narrow window in the doors. Clara was bent over Noah’s bed as a respiratory therapist adjusted tubing beside him. Caleb stood rigid at the foot of the mattress. Lily had curled into a plastic chair, almost hidden inside her pink coat.
“Understood,” Ethan said.
He sat in the waiting room.
Marcus remained standing until Ethan pointed toward the chair beside him.
“You’re making everyone nervous.”
“I’m making the gentleman by the vending machines nervous.”
The gentleman in question had been photographing Ethan’s reflection in the dark screen of a coffee machine.
Marcus sat without relaxing. “The sidewalk video is online.”
“How bad?”
“The boy calling you Daddy is clear. So is Ms. Bennett saying your mother threatened her.”
Ethan rubbed both hands over his face.
“Take it down.”
“We can request removal from the original account. It’s already been copied.”
“How many?”
“Enough.”
“Define enough.”
Marcus turned his phone toward him. The video had been posted eighteen minutes earlier. It had more than six hundred thousand views.
Ethan watched three seconds before handing the phone back.
His own face disturbed him. He saw the precise instant recognition stripped away the public expression he had spent years perfecting.
“Board?” he asked.
“Chairman Voss called twice. General counsel called four times. Communications has sent a draft statement.”
“I don’t have a statement.”
“They do.”
“Tell them not to release anything.”
Marcus sent the message.
A vending machine hummed. A toddler on the opposite side of the room dragged a wooden bead along a wire maze while her father slept with his head against the wall. Somewhere beyond the doors, an alarm sounded and stopped.
May you like
Ethan stared at the damp cuff of his suit. A thread of cardboard clung to the polished toe of his left shoe.
He remembered Clara making signs for a campus fundraiser because his handwriting looked, in her words, like a cardiogram during an earthquake. She had sat cross-legged on the floor of his apartment, drawing clean block letters while he complained about the price of printer ink. She had laughed and told him he would become rich solely to avoid shopping for office supplies.
