Chapter 7: Which Hospital

The nurse answered Marit three days later, and the message was short.

I'll meet her after the dedication. Not before. Tell her not to go.

I went.

The Selene Baird Nursery Wing opened on the third floor of Mercy General, and by seven o'clock the lobby was full of donors holding champagne.

I wore dark green, and Desmond wore a black suit and a tie I had not picked.

He met me at the bottom of the stairs with his hand out.

"You don't have to do this," he said.

"I told Selene I'd come."

"She'd understand."

"I wouldn't," I said, and took his arm.

He looked down at my hand on his sleeve and didn't say anything.

Hester stood on a low platform under a banner printed with a gold cradle.

She had a microphone and a speech and a lavender dress.

I watched her smile at the room, feeling a cold fury rise up before I pushed it down.

"We are gathered," Hester began, "for the child we did not meet."

She spoke for ten minutes.

She spoke about a young woman's courage and a family's grief, and about how some losses build something.

Selene stood beside her with her hands folded, and she cried at exactly the right moment.

It was lovely.

I looked at the banner and the champagne and the donors dabbing their eyes, and I thought about a heartbeat on a screen, and I kept my face still.

The plaque was by the door.

Gold letters on dark wood.

The date was the night I had bled in a lobby while a hospital full of people looked at someone else.

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