Chương 11
“I saw it before I took him from your room.”
Lauren felt cold.
“What?”
“It was tucked inside his blanket.”
“Already?”
“Yes.”
“Who put it there?”
“I don’t know.”
Evan laughed harshly.
“Of course.”
Dana flinched.
Lauren said, “Why didn’t you tell police earlier?”
“I did. In the second interview.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was ashamed because it means I had one more chance to stop.”
Lauren said nothing.
Dana’s mouth trembled.
“I saw the wrong bracelet. I knew Pierce’s plan had changed. He had told me I would take Noah to the nursery and someone else would handle the rest. But when I saw the Kerr band already in the blanket, I knew somebody had been in your room before me.”
“My phone.”
“Probably.”
“And you still took him.”
Dana nodded.
“Yes.”
Lauren stared at her.
Dana did not look away this time.
“Why?”
“I kept thinking I could control how bad it became.”
Lauren almost laughed.
Margaret’s disease.
Dana’s too.
Maybe everyone’s.
“What happened in the procedure room?”
“Celeste was there.”
“Did you know her?”
“I recognized her.”
“What did she do?”
“She took Noah from the bassinet.”
Lauren’s arms tightened automatically.
Dana saw it.
“I took him back.”
“When?”
“Almost immediately.”
“Why?”
“Because she had another ankle band.”
“What did it say?”
“Mitchell.”
Lauren frowned.
Dana continued.
“She was going to remove Noah’s legitimate band and put it on the other baby.”
The plan became suddenly, horribly concrete.
Two babies.
Two sets of labels.
One switch spreading through records because staff would trust the bands already on the infants.
“She had scissors.”
Lauren felt nauseated.
“She cut his band?”
“No. I grabbed him.”
“You grabbed Noah.”
“Yes.”
“What did Celeste do?”
“She told me I was in too deep to change my mind.”
“Were you?”
“I thought so.”
“What changed?”
Dana looked toward the floor.
“He started crying.”
Lauren waited.
Dana’s face twisted.
“That’s it.”
No grand moral awakening.
A baby cried.
“I had taken care of him after delivery. I’d watched you count his toes like you thought the hospital might charge extra for ten. I knew him.”
Lauren remembered.
At 1:15, Dana had said, “They all look annoyed when they’re new.”
Lauren had laughed.
Dana swallowed.
“When he cried, I couldn’t make him into an object anymore.”
Evan looked away.
Lauren felt anger rise and break against something softer she did not want.
Dana continued.
“I took off the Kerr bracelet. Celeste tried to stop me. We argued. Someone came into the hallway. I brought Noah back to you.”
“And she took my phone?”
“I think she already had it.”
“Why?”
“Maybe to stop you calling anyone if you woke.”
“Maybe.”
Dana nodded.
“I’m sorry.”
Lauren looked at her.
There were apologies too small for what they were asked to carry.
This was one.
“I don’t forgive you.”
“I know.”
“I might never.”
“I know.”
“You don’t get credit for returning what you helped take.”
Dana’s eyes filled.
“I know.”
Lauren’s voice softened despite herself.
“But you did return him.”
Dana looked up.
Lauren hated the relief in her face.
“Don’t make that bigger than it is.”
“I won’t.”
“Make it exactly what it is.”
Dana nodded.
“I will.”
Police took her away.
Lauren watched from the doorway.
Dana’s wrists were not cuffed.
She walked between the detectives with her hands folded in front of her.
At the elevator, she turned once.
Lauren did not wave.
Dana did not either.
The next morning, Henry Kerr was still alive.
Lauren learned this from Claire, not from Margaret.
Claire sent a text through Andrea.
Still here.
Two words.
Lauren answered:
Good.
She stared at the message for a long time after sending it.
Outside her window, traffic moved along the avenue below the hospital. People stopped at a light, waited, continued.
The ordinary movement offended her at first.
Then it comforted her.
Somebody was late for work.
Somebody needed gas.
Somebody was arguing about breakfast.
The world had room for things besides terror.
Evan came back from the cafeteria with a blueberry muffin and announced that hospital coffee was evidence of institutional hostility.
Lauren took the coffee anyway.
It was terrible.
They drank it.
At 9:00, a police lieutenant arrived with Detective Hale.
Lionel Pierce had been detained at an airport in another state after investigators connected his ticket to an alias used on one of the consulting-company leases.
He had not been charged with every aspect of the case yet.
The investigation was continuing.
Lauren heard the careful words.
Detained.
Connected.
Investigation.
No dramatic certainty.
No instant justice.
“What happens now?” Evan asked.
Hale said, “Now it gets slow.”
He was right.
Lauren left the hospital that afternoon.
Not through a loading dock.
Not through a private tunnel.
She walked through the main lobby holding Noah while Evan carried the bags and Dennis walked several steps behind them.
People passed without knowing who she was.
A little girl pressed both hands to the glass doors and stared at the baby.
An elderly man waiting for a ride smiled.
Someone near the coffee kiosk dropped a metal water bottle.
Lauren flinched so hard that Noah stirred.
Evan saw.
“You okay?”
“No.”
He nodded.
“Me neither.”
They kept walking.
At the curb, Lauren stopped.
A black SUV idled twenty yards away.
Her pulse jumped.
Dennis noticed.
He checked.
It belonged to a family picking up another patient.
Lauren felt embarrassed.
Then angry at being embarrassed.
They installed Noah’s car seat twice because Evan became convinced the first angle was wrong.
“It was inspected yesterday,” Lauren said.
“I don’t care.”
“Evan.”
“I don’t care.”
She waited.
He adjusted it again.
Then again.
Finally Lauren touched his shoulder.
“You can’t bolt him to the earth.”
Evan closed his eyes.
“I’d like to.”
“I know.”
They drove home at twenty-eight miles an hour.
Three weeks passed before Lauren slept more than two consecutive hours.
Noah contributed to that.
So did fear.
May you like
She checked his ankle whenever she woke.
There was no hospital band anymore.
