Chapter 14: Kerry's Shift

Ronan drove me to St. Anne's and parked across from the emergency entrance.

"I'm not coming in," he said.

"Why not?"

"Because the second a Keyes walks in beside you, it becomes a story about him."

"It's already a story about him."

"Then let it be a story about Kerry," he said. "Go."

The records window sat at the back of the waiting room, behind a rope line and a row of plastic chairs.

Every chair was full.

A man in a gray suit stood at the window with a leather folder, and Kerry stood on the other side of the glass in her scrubs.

Her arms were folded and her chin was up.

"I'm not asking twice," the man said. "The request is signed."

"By whom?" Kerry said.

"By Landon Carrington, the patient's husband."

"Her ex-husband."

"The divorce isn't final."

"She signed it in this building," Kerry said. "I watched. You can have the page numbers."

A few heads turned in the chairs.

I stopped at the rope.

Kerry saw me, and one corner of her mouth moved, and then she turned back to the glass.

"Sir, here is how it works," she said, loudly enough for the room.

"A patient's file belongs to the patient."

"She's my client's wife."

"Her spouse, her ex or her mother-in-law gets nothing without her written release."

"Her husband is the presumed father."

"Presumed by who?"

The man's jaw tightened.

"Miss Rooney, you work in the ER. You are not in records. You have no authority to refuse."

"I have a badge," Kerry said. "I have a compliance hotline. And I have forty witnesses with phones."

An old man in the front row held his up and waved it.

"I'm filming, miss," he said. "Go on."

The lawyer's color rose.

He leaned toward the glass and lowered his voice, and I stepped under the rope.

"The family only wants the dating scan," he said. "One page. Nobody gets hurt."

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