Never In Another Life novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: 3:51 A.M.

I ran the whole way from the car.

Declan came behind me with Sammy in his arms, my son's face pressed into his neck, the blanket dragging behind them on the pavement.

The night nurse met me at the ward door with her hands out.

"She's breathing," she said before I could ask. "We got the cord back in at three fifty-four. The battery held. She dipped to eighty-two and came back up."

I pushed past her.

My mother lay in her bed under the little lamp, the ventilator hissing and clicking in its steady rhythm.

Her chest rose and fell.

I checked the plug, the wall, the monitor.

I checked her steady breathing against my own wrist.

I put my forehead against her hand, and it was warm.

"I'm here," I whispered. "I'm sorry. I'm here."

The director arrived at five, in a coat over her pajamas, and pulled up the hallway camera with a face like stone.

The three of us stood around her small monitor.

The footage was grainy and gray.

At 3:41 a.m. a woman in a long camel coat walked down the corridor, unhurried, her hair tucked under a gray scarf.

She did not look at the camera.

She pushed open my mother's door.

At 3:48 she came out and walked back the way she had come.

The scarf slipped as she turned, and the corridor light caught a face I would know anywhere.

"That's her," I said.

"She signed in at the desk as a physician," the director said. Her voice was very flat. "The night aide let her in. She said she was consulting on my mother's case for Lakeshore."

"Is there a camera in the room?"

"No. That's the policy. Privacy."

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