Chapter 24: Light

"A light," I said. "Where?"

"There." She pointed, a little wrong, at the window. "It's big. It's yellow. It's inside the tape."

The nurse at the monitor stopped what she was doing and looked at me.

I couldn't talk.

The surgeon came around the curtain with a chart.

"She says there's a light," the nurse said.

"Then there's a light." The surgeon smiled. "That's all I want today. Tomorrow we take the shield off and see what else."

"What else?" Lily said.

"Everything. Blurry for a while. Then less blurry."

"Will I see Mama?"

"If she sits close enough."

"She'll sit close enough," Lily said.

At two-thirty Raymond called again.

I took it in the hall by the fish tank.

"It's done," he said.

"Done how?"

"The prosecutor stood up and asked the judge to dismiss every charge. 'In the interest of justice.' That's all she said."

"He's free?"

"They have to process him out. Tonight sometime. The young one is crying in the men's room."

Behind him somebody yelled, "I am NOT."

"And Daniel?"

"Left before the judge finished. Didn't look at me."

Raymond lowered his voice.

"The prosecutor took me aside. The card's real. Two people get charged. It'll take weeks, and not one word gets out before it's done."

"Not one word," I said.

"How's my girl?"

"She saw a light."

He didn't answer.

I heard him sit down on something hard.

Lily slept at the hospital that night, and I slept in the chair.

Rafael texted at 11:52.

I'm out. Don't come. Sleep. I'll be there in the morning.

Then a second one.

She went first.

At eight the next morning we sat in a dim exam room on the third floor.

Lily sat on my lap because she said the big chair was too big.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Goodbye to the Man Who Betrayed Us from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.