Chương 3
Wren ignored him and opened the rideshare application on her phone. Her hands shook so badly she entered the wrong hospital twice.
“You are fifteen,” Bellamy said. “You are not leaving without a guardian.”
“I took care of a baby while his mother vanished to meet someone in a parking lot, but now I’m too young to cross town?”
“That is not what I said.”
“It’s what everybody says after they need something.”
Grant exhaled through his nose. “How far away is your aunt?”
“Works nights at the Marlowe Hotel. Twenty minutes if she can leave.”
“Call her.”
“She’ll lose her shift.”
“Call her.”
Wren pressed Maribel’s name.
Her aunt answered on the fourth ring with the clipped voice she used at the front desk. “Marlowe guest services, this is Maribel.”
“It’s me.”
The professional brightness vanished. “What happened?”
Wren looked at Bellamy and could not make the sentences line up. Tobin stopped breathing. I pushed his chest. A man with a badge stopped me. The baby has a heartbeat now. Celia is somewhere in a car. Mrs. Haney thinks I am a monster.
“Can you come?” Wren asked.
“I’m coming.”
“You’ll get written up.”
“Wren.”
“I’m at Celia’s apartment.”
“I know where you are. I’m coming.”
Her aunt hung up.
Bellamy asked permission to photograph the marks on Wren’s arms. She said no. Grant asked if she wanted medical attention. She said no to him too. They stood around her as if refusal were another kind of injury.
While they waited, Grant found a clean dish towel and set it over the broken door latch so no one would cut a hand. He did it without comment. Bellamy walked into the hallway twice to speak into his radio. Each time, his voice became formal.
“Infant transported with spontaneous circulation.”
“Juvenile witness remains on scene.”
“No suspect detained at this time.”
Wren heard the last one and laughed again.
Bellamy came back inside. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You keep doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Laughing.”
“I don’t know what you want me to do instead.”
He did not have an answer.
Maribel arrived in her hotel uniform, a black blazer over a cream blouse, her name badge still pinned straight. One side of her hair had escaped its twist. She entered the apartment, saw the broken door, the officers, the overturned bottle, and Wren beside the couch.
“Take your hands off her,” she said.
No one was touching Wren.
Bellamy raised both palms. “Ma’am—”
“I said it before you decided to.”
Maribel crossed the room and examined Wren’s face, then her shoulders, then the red marks on her upper arms. She did not hug her. Wren was grateful. If Maribel hugged her, she might break open in a way that could not be managed in front of strangers.
“What did he do?”
“He thought I was hurting Tobin.”
Maribel looked at Bellamy.
“My initial assessment was incorrect,” he said.
“Your initial assessment has fingerprints.”
“We can arrange for a supervisor to take a statement.”
“You can arrange for me to take my niece to the hospital.”
Grant handed Maribel a card. “An investigator will need to speak with both of you. The infant’s condition may require a child welfare notification.”
Maribel read the card without moving her eyes. “She saved him.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then notify somebody of that.”
Bellamy opened his mouth.
Maribel pointed at him. “Not you.”
They left through the broken doorway. Mrs. Haney watched through the narrow gap of her own door. Maribel turned her head, and the gap closed.
In the elevator, Wren pressed the button for the lobby even though it was already lit. Her bare feet were gray from Celia’s carpet.
Maribel looked down. “Where are your shoes?”
“By the couch, maybe.”
“We’re not going back.”
“I don’t care.”
“You’ll care when you step on a needle in a hospital parking lot.”
“There aren’t needles all over the hospital parking lot.”
“There are always needles wherever you have no shoes.”
Wren leaned against the elevator wall. Maribel took off her own low black flats and handed them over.
“What are you going to wear?”
“My dignity.”
“You left that at the hotel.”
“Then it can finish my shift.”
Wren put on the shoes. They were too small and warm from Maribel’s feet. The ordinary discomfort steadied her.
The elevator opened on three people holding grocery bags. They took in Maribel’s stockinged feet, Wren’s tangled hair, and the police lights flashing through the glass doors. No one asked what had happened.
At St. Vincent Children’s Hospital, the emergency entrance was crowded with parents, security guards, and a man arguing into a phone about parking validation. Wren saw the ambulance bay through a pair of automatic doors but could not tell which vehicle had carried Tobin.
The receptionist asked for the baby’s name.
“Tobin Rusk,” Wren said.
“Relationship?”
“Babysitter.”
The receptionist looked at Maribel.
“Guardian of the babysitter,” Maribel said.
“I can’t provide medical information to either of you.”
“We don’t need his chart,” Maribel replied. “We need to know whether he is alive.”
“I understand. I still can’t—”
A security guard approached, not threateningly, but with the patient posture of someone who spent his nights being blamed for rules he had not written.
Wren said, “His mother is coming.”
“Then you can wait for her,” the receptionist said.
They sat beneath a television playing a cooking competition with the sound off. A chef held up a collapsed cake while captions described it as devastating. Wren watched the cake until her vision blurred.
Maribel went to a vending machine and returned with water, crackers, and a pair of hospital socks purchased from the gift shop. The socks had cartoon penguins wearing scarves.
“They only had small,” she said.
“They’re ugly.”
“They were nine dollars. Respect them.”
May you like
Wren changed into the socks. Maribel put her shoes back on.
After twenty minutes, Celia ran through the entrance wearing jeans, a green sweater, and one unfastened boot. Her long blond hair was stuck to the wet corners of her mouth. A man followed her, broad-shouldered and pale, carrying her coat.
