Chương 4
“Cord blood is discarded if no one saves it.”
“That doesn’t answer me.”
“It wouldn’t hurt her.”
“You were trying to make Ethan deliver her at thirty weeks.”
“I was trying to make him stop dismissing the risk.”
“What risk?”
Caleb’s breath caught. He looked toward the window, where the last daylight had thinned into a gray reflection of the room.
“Mason’s treatment isn’t working anymore.”
“And?”
“They need a donor.”
“And?”
“The registry hasn’t found a good match.”
Grace’s throat tightened. “You think our daughter is a match.”
“She could be.”
“You don’t know.”
“The transplant team said a sibling could be the best chance.”
“A full sibling. She would be his half sister.”
“They said it was still possible.”
“Possible is not the same as matched.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?”
He stood again. Caleb had never been able to remain seated while defending himself. He needed height, motion, something to make his body part of the argument.
“There’s a treatment window,” he said. “They’re trying to keep him stable long enough to get to transplant, but his infections keep coming back. He was admitted again yesterday. Nora called me this morning.”
“This morning.”
“That’s why I panicked.”
“That’s why you wanted them to cut me open.”
“I didn’t say it correctly.”
“You said it clearly.”
“I thought if she was already coming early—”
“She is not already coming early.”
“You were bleeding.”
“I have placenta previa. They told us this could happen. They also told us every week matters.”
“Mason may not have weeks.”
The words hung between them.
Grace looked down at the kit. The label had been printed three days earlier.
“This wasn’t panic from this morning.”
Caleb said nothing.
“You ordered this before today.”
“I ordered it when the coordinator told me what would be needed.”
“Does the coordinator think I consented?”
“The forms aren’t complete.”
“My name is on the packet.”
“As the mother.”
“Did you tell them I knew about Mason?”
Caleb’s silence lasted too long.
Grace pressed the call button.
He crossed the room in two steps.
“I didn’t sign your name.”
She flinched before he touched anything.
Caleb stopped with his hand over the control panel.
Tasha opened the door.
Grace did not take her eyes off her husband. “I want him out.”
“Grace, please.”
“I want security, and I want this kit documented in my chart.”
Tasha looked from the box to Caleb. Her expression sharpened.
“Mr. Morgan, you need to leave.”
“This is a family matter.”
“She asked you to leave.”
“I’m the baby’s father.”
“You are not the patient,” Tasha said.
Caleb’s face folded briefly. The anger left, and beneath it was something younger and more frightened.
“Mason could die.”
Grace felt the sentence land where he intended it to. He had always known how to place his pain inside her until refusing him felt like cruelty.
She held the call button under her thumb.
“I am sorry he is sick,” she said. “You still have to leave.”
Security arrived within minutes. Caleb did not fight them. He picked up his phone, left the food on the counter, and walked out between two officers with his shoulders rigid.
The overnight bag remained open on the floor.
Tasha placed the cord-blood kit inside a clear hospital property bag and wrote the time across the seal. She asked Grace whether Caleb had threatened her, whether there were weapons in the home, whether she had somewhere safe to go after discharge.
Grace answered no, no, and maybe.
When Tasha asked whether she wanted to call anyone, Grace thought of her sister, Rebecca, who lived twenty minutes away and had disliked Caleb from the first Thanksgiving dinner because he corrected the way she carved turkey.
“I need my phone charged first,” Grace said.
Tasha found the cord in the bag and plugged it into the wall.
Neither woman commented on the lie that had hidden it.
Rebecca answered on the second ring.
She began with, “Are you okay? I’ve called four times,” then stopped when Grace said, “Caleb has an eight-year-old son.”
There was a pause.
“Say that again.”
“His name is Mason. He’s sick. Caleb brought a cord-blood kit for the baby.”
Rebecca breathed into the phone.
Grace heard a television in the background, then the click of it being muted.
“I’m coming.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I’m already putting on pants.”
It was such an ordinary Rebecca sentence that Grace’s eyes filled before she could stop them.
She pressed the heel of her hand beneath one eye.
“Don’t call Mom.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were thinking about it.”
“I was thinking about calling the police.”
“Security removed him.”
“Good.”
“Becca.”
“I’m listening.”
Grace looked at the sealed hospital bag on the counter. “He said Mason could die.”
Rebecca’s answer came slower. “That is terrible.”
“Yes.”
“It does not make what Caleb did less terrible.”
Grace closed her eyes.
The baby moved beneath her hand, a slow rolling pressure that ended near her ribs.
“I don’t know what to do.”
“You don’t have to decide anything tonight except who is allowed in your room.”
Rebecca arrived wearing black leggings, one winter boot, and one rain shoe. She did not notice until she was standing beside the bed.
Grace looked down.
“What?”
“Your shoes.”
Rebecca followed her gaze. “I was in a hurry.”
The laugh escaped Grace before she could decide whether laughing was appropriate. It hurt her abdomen. She pressed a hand there, and Rebecca’s face immediately changed.
“Was that a contraction?”
“No. It was your footwear.”
“Good. I’m glad my humiliation has medical value.”
May you like
She pulled the chair closer and sat. For a while, neither of them spoke.
Grace had spent most of adulthood being the sister who arrived. She had held Rebecca’s hand through a biopsy, driven their mother home after cataract surgery, and once spent six hours cleaning a flooded apartment while Rebecca sat on the stairs in borrowed sweatpants. Receiving help made her restless. She kept noticing things Rebecca could do more efficiently—the coat draped over the chair, the coffee cup on the windowsill, the soup leaking into Caleb’s paper sack.
