Chương 3
Can you pick up sparkling water on your way back? Your mother only has the weird hospital stuff.
Ethan read it twice.
Then he set the phone facedown on his knee.
Daniel came in carrying two coffees.
“I didn’t know how you take it.”
“Black.”
Daniel handed him one.
“It’s terrible black.”
“That’s fine.”
Daniel sat across from him.
For a while neither spoke.
The television showed a basketball game no one in the room was watching.
Ethan peeled the paper sleeve from the coffee cup and flattened it between his fingers.
“You were her nurse today?”
“From seven this morning until shift change. I stayed.”
“Why?”
Daniel looked toward the hallway.
“Because I’m nosy.”
Ethan waited.
Daniel smiled faintly.
“And because your mother asked me not to leave until you came back.”
The flattened paper sleeve stopped moving in Ethan’s hands.
“She asked for me?”
“Several times.”
“I was here this afternoon.”
“She wanted you alone.”
Ethan stared at the coffee.
“Vanessa was here.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Daniel rubbed a thumb over the seam of his cup.
“I tried.”
Ethan looked up.
“At five-thirty. You were taking a call in the hall. I said your mother wanted five minutes with you privately.”
Ethan remembered.
Daniel had touched his elbow while Martin was telling him that a lender wanted revised projections before morning. Ethan had answered without removing the phone from his ear.
Later.
He had said later.
He closed his eyes.
Daniel did not offer comfort.
Ethan appreciated him for that.
“What did my mother tell you?”
“Not much. She was afraid.”
“My mother isn’t afraid of people.”
Daniel gave him a tired look.
“Everybody’s afraid of somebody.”
The sentence irritated Ethan because it sounded true.
Daniel continued.
“She kept asking whether the room door locked from inside. I told her no, not in the way she meant. She asked if visitors were recorded. I said people badge into the floor, but visitors don’t necessarily badge into each room.”
“Did she mention Vanessa?”
“No.”
“Accounts?”
“No.”
“A transfer?”
“No.”
Daniel leaned forward.
“She did ask me something strange.”
“What?”
“She asked whether a patient could request a copy of every medication ordered during a hospital stay.”
Ethan looked at him.
“What did you tell her?”
“That she could access records through the patient portal or request them from medical records.”
“Did she?”
“I don’t know.”
Ethan picked up his phone.
His first instinct was to call someone at the hospital and demand the records.
His second was to call his attorney.
His third was to call Vanessa.
That was the one that frightened him.
Some part of his brain still expected Vanessa to explain this.
He wanted her to produce the clean version, the competent version, the version where everyone had misunderstood something and he could return to being a man whose mother disliked his fiancée for ordinary reasons.
He and Vanessa were not formally engaged, though she had worn his grandmother’s ring for six months.
That distinction had become important to Margaret.
“If you are engaged,” she had said at Christmas, “then say engaged. If you are not, stop letting her wear jewelry that makes everyone pretend.”
Ethan had told her she was being petty.
Margaret had said, “I am petty. I am also correct.”
He had laughed despite himself.
Vanessa had not.
That had been the beginning of the worst year between his mother and the woman he planned to marry.
Not the first bad year.
The worst.
Margaret had disliked Vanessa almost immediately, which was partly why Ethan had ignored her later warnings. His mother had disliked three of the four women he had dated seriously. The one she liked had left him after eighteen months and married a pediatric dentist in Milwaukee.
Margaret still mailed that woman a birthday card.
She called it manners.
Ethan called it psychological warfare.
That history mattered now in the ugliest possible way.
Because when Margaret had begun saying Vanessa was dishonest, Ethan had already heard years of criticism beneath the words.
Too polished.
Too interested in money.
Too careful around powerful people.
Too impatient with waiters.
Too good at agreeing with Ethan when agreeing benefited her.
He had heard his mother’s voice and translated it into what he expected.
Control.
Jealousy.
Fear of being replaced.
He had not asked whether any of it was true.
At 11:08 p.m., the physician returned.
Margaret had a mild concussion, bruising consistent with a recent fall or impact, dehydration, and a small cut inside her lip. No new intracranial bleeding appeared on imaging. Her blood pressure remained unstable but manageable.
“What was in the syringe?” Ethan asked.
“The syringe has been transferred as evidence.”
“Was anything injected?”
“We’re reviewing the line and her labs.”
“Can you tell?”
“Sometimes. Not always immediately.”
“Is she going to die?”
The doctor paused.
Ethan hated the pause.
“She is stable right now.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“I know.”
The physician held his gaze.
“She is not showing signs that make us think she received a lethal injection tonight. But I’m not going to promise more than the evidence supports.”
Ethan nodded once.
It was the kind of answer he gave investors when they demanded certainty where none existed.
He had never understood how cruel that sounded until now.
At midnight, police told Vanessa she could leave with her attorney while the investigation continued.
Ethan objected.
Morales listened, then said, “I understand why you’re angry.”
“She threatened my mother with a syringe.”
“I heard your statement.”
“She tried to pick it up after I came in.”
“I heard that too.”
“And she walks out?”
“We don’t decide serious criminal charges in a hospital hallway because someone wealthy is furious.”
Ethan’s mouth tightened.
Morales did not blink.
May you like
That was the second person that night he immediately respected for refusing to be intimidated by him.
“We preserve evidence,” she continued. “We interview witnesses. We review medical records. We look at video. We establish what the substance was. We talk to your mother if and when she can safely talk. Then we act on facts.”
