He Let Our Baby Die Over a Hospital Bill novel · Chapter 15 of 32

Chapter 15: The Recording

"Listen to it alone," I read out loud.

Abe looked at the screen over my shoulder, and his jaw did the thing it did.

"How does he know it came?"

"His lawyer must have asked for it too."

I pressed the phone flat against my chest.

"He wants me alone on Gina's couch at two in the morning, hearing it."

"Then don't."

"I'm not going to."

I looked up at him.

"The laundromat. Tonight, after close. You and Gina."

"I'm off tonight," he said. "I'll be there."

The owner left us the keys and the lights over the back table.

"Lock up when you're done," he said.

He looked at my face, and then at Abe's.

"Coffee's free tonight."

The dryers were still warm. The whole room smelled like hot lint and fabric softener.

Gina sat on my left.

Abe sat on my right, on the dryer bench, with his knees nearly at his chest.

I put the phone on the folding table between the three of us.

The link opened on a plain gray page. A recording, eight minutes long.

"You don't have to," Gina said.

"Yes, I do."

I pressed play.

A click, and then a dispatcher, a woman, flat and steady.

"911, what's the address of your emergency?"

Then the midwife.

I'd never known her voice could sound like that.

She gave the address on Seventeenth Avenue fast, and then she said it.

"I have a patient at nine centimeters, the baby is low, and the father is refusing an ambulance. He's trying to put her in a car. I need a unit now. Please. Now."

Behind her, very small, there was a noise.

It took me a second to understand it was me.

A long low sound, the kind you only make once in your life.

Gina put her hand over her mouth.

The dispatcher asked questions. The midwife answered them all.

Then, in the background, Holden.

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