Chương 3
Mara was less stable.
She had lost more blood than she realized and needed treatment for a postpartum hemorrhage that had not fully stopped. The injuries across her back were superficial in some places, deeper in others. There were bruises around one wrist beneath the hospital band and a puncture mark high on her left arm that nobody could immediately explain.
The emergency physician asked whether she knew what medication had been given.
“No.”
“Did anyone tell you?”
“No.”
“Do you remember a syringe?”
Mara closed her eyes.
For a moment she saw only the ceiling at St. Catherine’s.
Not even the whole ceiling.
A yellow water stain above a recessed light.
Someone saying, Hold her shoulder.
Someone else saying, She’s contracting again.
Then the smell of rubbing alcohol.
She opened her eyes.
“Maybe.”
Adrian sat in a chair near the wall.
He had removed his uniform jacket. The white shirt underneath was wrinkled and stained at one cuff with Mara’s blood.
His phone had not stopped vibrating.
He ignored it.
Mara noticed that he had put the cream blanket from Lucy’s carrier across his knees while the nurse weighed her.
He kept rubbing the edge between his thumb and forefinger.
“You can answer it,” Mara said.
“No.”
“It might be work.”
“I know.”
She looked at him.
“That was a joke.”
“I know.”
“No, you didn’t.”
His mouth twitched.
For one second they were themselves again.
Then Lucy cried and both of them turned.
The doctor returned with a police detective.
This one was actually a detective.
Renee Alvarez introduced herself, pulled a chair closer, and asked whether Mara wanted Adrian in the room.
The question caught them both off guard.
Mara looked at her husband.
Nine years together, and nobody had ever asked that question in front of him.
“Yes.”
Alvarez sat.
“I’m going to ask you things you may already have told somebody. If you don’t remember, say you don’t remember. If you remember later, that’s fine. Don’t fill gaps because you think I need them filled.”
Mara almost told her she could have used that advice six hours earlier.
Instead she said, “Okay.”
“Start with when you arrived at St. Catherine’s.”
Mara looked down at her wrist.
The band was still there.
St. Catherine’s Women’s Pavilion.
MARIA COLE, printed under her legal first name, which almost nobody used.
Date of birth.
Medical record number.
A barcode.
Such a small thing for something that had nearly become the last official proof she existed.
She started at the beginning.
The contractions had become regular just after noon.
Adrian had been at a formal military foundation event across town, a ceremony he had told her for weeks he could leave at any moment. They had packed a hospital bag together. He had put the phone charger in the wrong side pocket. Mara had moved it and never told him because he would have argued his pocket was more logical.
She drove nowhere. A car service took her.
Her older sister lived in Arizona. Her mother had died four years earlier. Adrian’s mother was in London for a board meeting and had been trying to get on a flight since the first text.
Mara had not been alone in any tragic sense.
She had simply been physically alone.
At St. Catherine’s, a nurse named Tasha Greene admitted her.
Voss arrived around three.
“She was normal then,” Mara said.
“What does normal mean?”
“Annoying.”
Adrian looked up.
Mara glanced at him.
“She always talked like she was dictating a chart. Everything was ‘we’re progressing nicely’ and ‘baby A looks excellent.’ I hated it.”
“Did you trust her?”
“I thought I did.”
That was not quite true.
The last month of pregnancy, something about Voss had begun to bother her. Not enough to change doctors at thirty-five weeks. Not enough to name.
Voss had started asking more questions about Adrian’s schedule.
Was he deployed often?
Did they have family nearby?
Who had medical power of attorney?
Mara had assumed those were standard questions.
Now nothing felt standard.
At 5:31, Mara had texted Adrian.
Come now. I mean it.
She remembered because she had stared at the message afterward, angry that it showed Delivered but not Read.
Adrian shifted in his chair.
“At 5:37,” he said, “Dr. Voss called me.”
Alvarez looked at him.
“What did she say?”
“That labor had slowed. She said there was no reason to leave the ceremony yet.”
Mara stared.
“You never told me that.”
“I found out you were dead before I had the chance.”
The sentence lay between them.
Alvarez waited.
Mara rubbed the edge of her blanket.
“What happened after five thirty-one?” the detective asked.
“Everything got… wrong.”
“How?”
Mara tried.
A different nurse entered.
Not Tasha.
A man she had not met checked the IV.
Voss told her they were going to give something “to help her rest between contractions.”
Mara said she did not want anything that made her foggy.
Voss said it would not.
Mara remembered asking for Adrian.
Someone said he was on his way.
Then Voss took Mara’s phone from the tray because it was “in the sterile field,” though nobody was doing anything sterile.
After that came gaps.
Pressure.
A sharp pain.
Someone saying the second baby was transverse.
Voss saying, We’re not doing this here.
Mara asking where “here” was.
Then a different room.
The lights lower.
No window.
A clock on the wall showing 6:14.
That number.
She remembered it because someone asked Voss for the time.
“Time for what?” Alvarez asked.
“I don’t know.”
Mara swallowed.
“Dr. Voss said, ‘Six fourteen. Put it on all three.’”
Adrian stopped rubbing the blanket.
Alvarez’s pen paused.
“All three what?”
“I don’t know.”
Mara looked toward the bassinets.
Lucy was asleep.
Evan’s mouth worked in his sleep.
“I heard paper.”
“What happened next?”
“I was still having contractions.”
The answer sounded stupid.
Of course she was.
May you like
But that was the part she could not let go of.
At 6:14, her son was still inside her.
