Chương 5
Maribel made a sound beneath her breath.
Nolan left.
Wren sat in the consultation room after everyone else had gone. Her shoulders had begun to ache in deep, matching bands. She could still feel Bellamy’s hands, but the memory was already becoming unreliable. Sometimes his grip seemed to have lasted a full minute. Sometimes it was only the instant when Tobin lay alone.
Maribel opened a package of vending-machine crackers.
“You need food.”
“I’ll throw up.”
“Then throw up something.”
“I hate when you say things like that.”
“I hate most things I say. Eat.”
Wren put half a cracker in her mouth. It turned to dry paste she could not swallow.
At one in the morning, Celia received permission for one additional person to see Tobin through the glass doors of the pediatric intensive care unit. She chose Wren.
Nolan did not object. That frightened Wren too.
They scrubbed their hands at a sink outside the room. Celia scrubbed until her knuckles reddened.
“You can stop,” Wren said.
Celia kept rubbing.
“Celia.”
“I left him.”
“You left him with me.”
“I said twenty minutes.”
“You were gone forty-eight.”
Celia shut off the water. “Nolan called from downstairs. He said he had the insurance card Tobin needed for an appointment. Then he wanted to talk about the custody schedule, and I didn’t want him in the apartment.”
“You could have told me.”
“I thought it would be quick.”
“Your phone?”
“Battery died while we were arguing. His charger didn’t fit.”
“You were with him the whole time?”
Celia dried her hands slowly. “Yes.”
Wren remembered traffic behind Celia’s first call. “You said you were in a car.”
“Nolan drove me here.”
“Why didn’t you come upstairs when you saw the ambulance?”
“We were two blocks away by then.”
Wren nodded, but a small uneasiness remained. It did not yet have a shape.
Tobin lay in a hospital crib surrounded by machines. A clear tube disappeared into his mouth. Tape held it against his cheek. The blue color had left his lips, but his face was swollen enough to seem borrowed from another baby.
Wren stopped at the threshold.
Celia touched the middle of her back. “You don’t have to.”
“I do.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I left him on the floor.”
“The paramedics needed space.”
“I left him.”
Celia’s hand fell away. “Then stand there for a minute.”
Wren stood there.
A nurse adjusted a line and explained numbers Celia pretended to understand. The monitor traced Tobin’s heartbeats in green. Each spike brought relief, then another chance for fear before the next one arrived.
Wren moved to the crib.
The red marks from compressions were visible above the hospital blanket. Bellamy had stared at those marks as if they accused him. Nolan had looked at them as if they accused Wren. To Wren, they looked like proof that Tobin’s body had not been abandoned.
She touched one finger to his foot.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Celia turned sharply. “For what?”
Wren did not know how to explain that the apology was not an admission. It was for the force of her hands, for losing count when Bellamy pulled her, for being angry at a baby who refused his bottle earlier that evening, for every ordinary irritation that now seemed cruel.
“I should have called sooner.”
“You called when he collapsed.”
“I saw the pauses before.”
“You told me.”
“I didn’t make you take him to a doctor.”
“You’re fifteen.”
“That keeps being true only when something goes wrong.”
Celia pressed her lips together.
The nurse pretended to study the infusion pump.
After a while, Celia said, “I asked you to babysit because you never panic.”
Wren looked at Tobin.
“I panicked.”
“You called anyway.”
At three-thirty, Maribel took Wren home. Their apartment was six blocks from Celia’s, above a laundromat that never fully closed. Someone had left a rolling basket in the hallway. Maribel pushed it against the wall with one bare foot.
Inside, Wren found two missed calls from an unknown number and twelve messages from classmates. A video had begun circulating.
The first message came from Jessa, who sat behind her in chemistry.
ARE YOU OKAY???
The next included a link and three red exclamation marks.
A neighbor on the fourth floor had filmed from the end of the hallway. The video showed Bellamy dragging Wren backward through Celia’s doorway. It showed Wren reaching toward something out of frame. It did not clearly show Tobin, the phone, or the paramedics arriving. The caption read: TEEN GIRL PULLED OFF BABY DURING POLICE RESCUE.
The clip ended before the dispatcher spoke.
Wren watched it twice.
In the video, she looked wild. Her hair covered half her face. Her mouth opened around words the phone microphone had not captured. Bellamy looked decisive and strong. From a distance, the wrong story required less effort.
Maribel took the phone.
“Don’t read comments.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were about to.”
“I want to know what they think.”
“No, you want to find the worst one and use it to hurt yourself before anybody else gets the privilege.”
Wren stared at her.
Maribel set the phone facedown. “I was fifteen once.”
“Back when phones were attached to walls.”
“Back when cruelty had to walk to your house.”
Wren lay down without changing clothes. Sleep did not come. Every time she closed her eyes, the space between Bellamy pulling her away and the dispatcher speaking grew longer.
At eight in the morning, Detective Lena Ortiz called to schedule an interview. At eight-fifteen, a child protective services investigator called Maribel. At eight-twenty, the school attendance office sent an automated message about Wren’s absence. At eight-forty, Celia texted that Tobin had remained stable overnight.
At nine, Officer Bellamy knocked on their door.
Maribel looked through the peephole and did not open it.
“What do you want?”
His voice came through the wood. “I’d like to speak with Wren.”
“You can speak through the door.”
May you like
“I’m not here officially.”
“That sentence is not comforting.”
