Chương 3
“Which neighbor?”
“The woman across the street. Celia. I don’t know her last name.”
“Celia Alvarez,” Hannah said.
Everyone turned toward her.
“She brought us soup two days ago.”
Brittany pressed a hand to her mouth.
Officer Markham asked, “What time did you call emergency services?”
“I don’t know. A little after ten.”
“Why did you decide to call?”
Brittany looked at Ethan, and he saw something break behind her eyes.
“Noah stopped crying.”
Upstairs, Noah had stopped crying again.
Ethan’s phone rang.
He answered before the first vibration ended.
Isaac said, “His temperature has gone up. We need you back here.”
Ethan looked at Hannah.
She had heard enough to understand.
“Go,” she said again.
This time he went without arguing.
Noah’s fever climbed and held for nearly an hour. Ethan stood beside the warming bed while nurses worked. He kept one finger beneath Noah’s palm. The baby did not grip it at first.
Dr. Shah spoke in measured sentences. Some of the test results would take time. Noah’s heart rate was elevated but responding. His breathing remained acceptable. They were giving fluids and medication. Ethan asked the same questions repeatedly and received versions of the same honest answer.
They did not know yet.
At eleven thirty, a social worker named Gail Patterson entered carrying a paper cup and a clipboard. She wore gray sneakers with purple laces and apologized for interrupting.
Ethan told her he did not need social work.
“Most people don’t believe they do when I arrive,” Gail said. “Sometimes they’re right.”
“I need to be with my son.”
“You can stay with your son.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because law enforcement is downstairs, your wife has documented injuries, your newborn has been admitted with a serious fever, and there are conflicting accounts about what happened in your home.”
Ethan looked at the warming bed.
Gail pulled a chair closer but did not sit until he did. “Child protective services has been notified.”
He stood again.
“No.”
“It is standard in a situation involving alleged restraint and delayed medical care.”
“My wife didn’t hurt him.”
“I didn’t say she did.”
“My mother did this.”
“You weren’t there.”
The phrase landed in Diane’s voice.
Ethan stepped away from the chair. “That’s what she said.”
Gail nodded once. “Then we need to establish what happened without asking your son to bear the risk of our uncertainty.”
“You think you can take him from us?”
“I think people hear ‘child protective services’ and imagine the most frightening possible outcome. Most of the work is less dramatic than that. Questions. Safety plans. Home assessments. Sometimes temporary arrangements. Sometimes nothing further.”
“Temporary arrangements with who?”
“That depends on the facts.”
“Not my mother.”
Gail watched him carefully. “Would you agree to have no unsupervised contact between your mother and Noah while this is being investigated?”
“Yes.”
“Would Hannah?”
“Yes.”
“I need Hannah’s answer from Hannah.”
He almost snapped that Hannah had already answered with the bruises on her arms.
Instead, he looked through the clear wall of the warming bed at Noah. The baby’s hand twitched against his finger.
“What else?”
“Do you and Hannah have somewhere safe to stay after discharge?”
“Our house.”
“Who owns it?”
Ethan hesitated.
“My mother’s company.”
Gail wrote something down.
“We rent it.”
“Do you have a written lease?”
“Yes.”
He was not sure. Diane had called it a lease. Ethan signed papers two years earlier at the company office. The rent came out of his paycheck.
“Who is your employer?” Gail asked.
He gave a humorless laugh.
Gail did not need him to answer.
At noon, Ethan’s foreman called. Ray Peterson had worked for Carter Electric for twenty-three years and had known Ethan since he wore a child-size tool belt to company picnics.
“Your mother says there’s been a family emergency,” Ray said.
“That’s one way to put it.”
“She told me not to contact you.”
“But you did.”
“I’m not good at following instructions when people make them weird.”
Despite everything, Ethan nearly smiled.
Ray cleared his throat. “Do you need me to cover the site tomorrow?”
“My son is in neonatal care.”
The pause on the line lasted long enough that Ethan heard a drill whining in the background.
“Is he going to be okay?”
“They don’t know.”
“Then forget the site.”
“My mother won’t.”
“She’s not here.”
“She owns the place.”
“Today, I’m the one holding the keys.”
A nurse entered to check Noah’s monitor. Ethan turned away from the bed to lower his voice.
“Ray, did my mother ask me to go to Fulton Elementary this morning?”
“She said she needed you there.”
“Did we need me there?”
“The conduit problem was real.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Ray sighed. “I could’ve handled it.”
“Did she know that?”
“She always knows that.”
Ethan closed his eyes.
At 6:43 that morning, Diane had called him while he was warming a bottle. She said the school renovation was about to miss inspection. She said Ray needed him. She said Brittany would come over and help Hannah.
Hannah had stood in the kitchen doorway in her floral hospital gown, one hand on the wall.
“I don’t need both of them here,” she had said.
Ethan had kissed her forehead and told her it would only be three hours.
Her skin had felt warm.
He had blamed the kitchen.
“Ray,” he said, “save any messages from my mother about today.”
“What kind of messages?”
“All of them.”
Another pause.
“All right.”
“Don’t tell her.”
“Ethan.”
“Please.”
Ray’s voice changed. “All right.”
By early afternoon, Hannah had been moved to another floor for observation. Her blood pressure, hydration, and mental state needed monitoring. A psychiatrist had spoken with her because Diane claimed Hannah had become irrational and dangerous at home.
Hannah did not object to the evaluation.
May you like
That worried Ethan more than anger would have.
When he went to see her, she was sitting up with a cup of broth untouched on the tray. Her wrists were wrapped loosely in white gauze, not because the bruises required it, Doctor Ruiz had explained, but because the pressure of the bed linens hurt.
