Chapter 4 - THE SOUND OF RUNNING FEET
The heavy double doors at the entrance of the pediatric wing swung open with a loud, pneumatic hiss, followed by the frantic, rubber-soled squeak of running shoes against linoleum.
“Sarah!”
Rebecca emerged from the vestibule like a hurricane of maternal fury.
Sarah’s younger sister, thirty-two, looked like she had jumped out of bed five minutes after receiving the voicemail. She wore a heavy navy wool trench coat thrown haphazardly over pink flannel pajama bottoms, her damp brown hair jammed beneath a baseball cap, her face entirely free of makeup, pale with adrenaline. She clutched her car keys in one white-knuckled fist and a takeout cup of black coffee in the other.
She took in the scene in half a second: Sarah standing solitary beside the glass, the empty corridor, the closed doors of Room 412.
“Where is she? How is she?” Rebecca gasped, skidding to a halt, dropping the coffee cup onto an empty metal cart with a loud clatter as she grabbed Sarah by both shoulders. “I got your message—the highway was jammed, I ran three red lights—is she breathing? Did they put in a tube?”
“She’s stabilized,” Sarah said.
Her voice sounded strange, even to her own ears—flat, quiet, like a recording played from another room.
“The steroids brought the bronchial swelling down,” Sarah continued, her eyes never leaving the glass. “They have her on forty percent supplemental oxygen. The doctor said her lungs are clear enough that she won't need intubation. She’s sleeping now.”
Rebecca let out a long, ragged exhale that sounded like a tire deflating, her forehead sagging forward until it rested against Sarah’s temple. “Thank God. Oh, sweet Jesus, thank God.”
Rebecca pulled back, wiping a sheen of cold sweat from her brow, her chest heaving beneath the trench coat. Then, her eyes darted down the long, vacant hallway, looking left, then right, scanning the empty waiting alcoves.
Her brow furrowed into an angry, suspicious knot.
“Where is he?” Rebecca asked, her voice dropping into a harsh, sharp whisper. “Where is David?”
Sarah didn't speak. She simply lifted her left hand and handed her unlocked smartphone to her sister.
Rebecca snatched the phone, her thumb scrolling up through the string of twelve unanswered calls, the frantic timestamps stretching back to three in the morning, until her eyes landed on David’s single text message from five forty-nine.
Rebecca read it.
Sarah watched her sister’s face transform. The color rushed into Rebecca’s cheeks in a wave of violent, burning crimson. The veins along her neck stood out, her teeth clicking together so hard Sarah could hear the enamel grind.
“Stop calling him,” Rebecca said, her voice shaking with an unvarnished, volcanic rage.
Sarah looked down at her own shoes, her voice faint, fragile, carrying the pathetic ghost of ten years of marriage. “He’s her father, Becca. If something happened… if she turned worse… he has to know.”
“You already told him!” Rebecca hissed, shoving the phone back into Sarah’s palm with trembling fingers. “You told him she was in the intensive care unit! You told him she couldn't breathe! And this son of a bitch is telling you to use a nebulizer while he drinks mimosas with his consulting partners in Florida!”
“He said he had meetings—”
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“He’s lying to you, Sarah!” Rebecca cut her off, her hands gripping Sarah’s forearms with fierce, unyielding sisterly loyalty. “He has been lying to you for six months! A man who loves his daughter gets on the first flight out of Tampa! A man who cares about his wife doesn't press decline while his baby is in an oxygen tent! Look at this screen! Look at what he wrote to you!”
The words echoed off the sterile tiles, sharp, brutal, and utterly true.
