Chương 4
“No.”
“Ethan.”
“No.”
Rachel stayed quiet.
He read the letter again.
According to Linda, both children had already been intubated when they arrived. Both were premature. Both identification bands had been removed during emergency access and replaced in receiving.
Ava Walker was documented dead at 3:41.
Baby Girl Hayes was documented stable after surgery.
Three days later Baby Girl Hayes left the neonatal ICU under a corrected legal name: Emily Hayes.
Ethan’s eyes stopped moving.
“Carter.”
“Adoption,” Rachel said. “Years later. Her mother remarried. Michael Carter adopted her when she was four.”
“Her mother?”
“Joanna Hayes.”
Ethan stood.
Rachel looked up.
“Where are you going?”
“Bathroom.”
He walked past the counter, past the pie case, and pushed through the restroom door hard enough that it struck the rubber stop.
Inside, fluorescent light reflected from a mirror too bright for two in the morning.
He gripped the sink.
For nine years he had carried one image more reliably than any photograph.
A nurse had brought him to a private room after Ava died. She had warned him that their daughter had undergone resuscitation and that there would be tape marks and bruising. He had stood beside a bassinet while Rachel slept under medication upstairs.
The baby had been wrapped to the shoulders.
He had asked to see her left hand because Rachel had spent the previous afternoon joking that Ava had inherited Ethan’s long fingers.
The nurse had hesitated.
Then she had unwrapped one arm.
Tiny fingers.
Pale.
Still.
Ethan had touched the back of the hand with one knuckle.
He had not looked at the ear.
He had not checked the bracelet.
He had not demanded DNA.
Because normal fathers did not demand DNA from dead newborns.
Normal fathers trusted nurses.
Normal fathers signed forms because somebody placed forms in front of them and told them what each line meant.
He bent over the sink.
Nothing came up.
After a while he ran cold water over his hands and returned to the booth.
Rachel had ordered him toast.
He stared at it.
“You looked like you were going to pass out.”
“I don’t want toast.”
“I didn’t say you had to eat it.”
“Why would Hayes’s family not know?”
“Joanna was nineteen. Unmarried. Her mother handled most of the paperwork. She says in old court records that Emily’s biological father disappeared before the birth.”
“You contacted her?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“But Diane did.”
Ethan looked up sharply.
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
“Why?”
“She panicked.”
“What did she say?”
“She asked whether Joanna had ever been told about an identification problem when Emily was born.”
“And?”
“Joanna hung up.”
“Christ.”
“Diane called me afterward. She was crying so hard I could barely understand her.”
“You told her not to contact them.”
“Yes.”
“And she did it anyway.”
“Yes.”
He pushed the toast away.
“So Joanna knows somebody is asking.”
“She knows a stranger asked a strange question.”
“That’s enough.”
“I know.”
“We need an attorney.”
“I have one.”
“Your divorce attorney is not handling this.”
“Not Melissa. A medical-records attorney.”
“You hired another lawyer without telling me?”
“We are getting divorced, Ethan. I don’t run hiring decisions past you.”
“This involves me.”
“I’ve known that for three weeks.”
“And you waited.”
Her expression hardened.
“I waited until I had something stronger than a woman’s dead sister’s notebook.”
“You had the bracelet.”
“I had plastic with a name on it.”
“You had the transfer sheet.”
“A photocopy.”
“You had enough to tell me.”
“Did I?”
“Yes.”
Rachel sat back.
“Three years after Ava died, I told you the time on the ambulance report did not match the receiving chart.”
Ethan said nothing.
“You told me I was torturing myself.”
“I remember.”
“Four years after she died, I told you a nurse had mentioned a replacement band.”
“I remember.”
“You asked me to stop requesting records.”
“I remember.”
“Five years after she died, I said I wanted an independent review.”
“I said no.”
“You said we couldn’t live inside a clerical error forever.”
Ethan looked at the table.
“That was a terrible thing to say.”
“It was.”
“I thought I was helping you.”
“I know.”
She said it without forgiveness or accusation.
Just fact.
That was harder.
Rachel stirred her coffee even though she had added nothing to it.
“I waited because I needed to know whether I was bringing you evidence or another reason to tell me I was sick.”
“I never called you sick.”
“You called Dr. Levin.”
“Our therapist.”
“You called him without me.”
“You hadn’t slept.”
“You asked whether obsessive grief could create false pattern recognition.”
Ethan’s head came up.
“How do you know that?”
“He told me.”
“He wasn’t supposed to.”
“He told me two years later when I asked him why he kept redirecting every conversation whenever I mentioned records.”
Ethan removed his glasses.
He cleaned them with the edge of his shirt, though they were not dirty.
“I was scared of you.”
Rachel’s spoon stopped.
“Not scared you’d hurt me,” he said. “Scared you were going to disappear into it.”
“So you decided which reality I was allowed to investigate.”
“I decided badly.”
“That isn’t the same as not deciding.”
“No.”
The server returned and asked whether they needed anything.
Rachel said no.
Ethan asked for water.
After the server left, neither spoke for almost a minute.
The ordinary clatter from the kitchen felt obscene and comforting at once.
Finally Ethan put his glasses back on.
“What do we do now?”
Rachel reached into the envelope.
She placed a business card between them.
MARIA DELGADO
CIVIL LITIGATION — HEALTHCARE & INSTITUTIONAL LIABILITY.
“Eight-thirty,” she said.
“You made an appointment.”
“For me.”
“Now it’s for us.”
The office of Delgado & Finch occupied three rooms above a dentist in Falls Church. Ethan had expected marble, assistants and a receptionist who made people wait on purpose.
May you like
Maria Delgado answered the door herself while holding a paper cup of coffee.
She was in her late forties, wore sneakers with a dark suit, and had a yellow legal pad tucked under one arm.
