Chapter 9: The Luncheon

On Thursday morning, security stopped me at the door of the children's ward.

I had worked there for six years.

The guard held out an envelope and wouldn't look at my face.

"HR wants you in the office, Ms. Holm. You're to leave your badge."

The letter inside was one paragraph.

A donor had filed a complaint about my conduct at a private event, and I was suspended without pay pending review.

It was signed by the hospital's president.

It did not name the donor.

It did not have to.

I stood in the hallway where I had held a four-year-old's hand through her first chemo, staring down at the paper.

Then I put my badge in the envelope and walked out.

Ford was waiting in the pickup at the curb.

He had told me he'd drive me, and he had not said why.

Since Wednesday morning he had said almost nothing about the man with the letter, or about Sunday at four.

He had checked his phone at every red light.

I had not pushed.

Sunday was three days off, and I could count.

"They suspended me," I said.

He took the letter and read it.

His face did not change, but the knuckles on the steering wheel did.

"Where is she today?"

"She has the donor luncheon at the Lakeside at noon," I said. "Two hundred people, the hospital board, the paper."

I looked out the windshield.

"Her whole life is that room."

"Dessa."

"I'm going in."

"I'll come."

"Wait in the lobby," I said. "I'm a nurse. I can walk into any room if I'm holding a clipboard."

I didn't have a clipboard, so I stopped at a bakery on the way.

I walked into the Bexley Lakeside ballroom at twelve-ten carrying a box of lemon bars.

Nobody stopped me.

Round tables, white linen, two hundred people in good clothes.

At the front, Gwendolyn stood at a podium in a pearl-gray suit with a gardenia on the lapel.