He Gave Her My Hospital Wing novel · Chapter 17 of 24
Chapter 17: The Caseworker
I got to the dock in twenty minutes, which was fifteen faster than the speed limit allowed.
On the way I sent Colt one text: A caseworker is at the dock. Come if you want.
It was the first thing I had offered him on my own, and I did not look at it twice.
The county car was parked across two spaces in the gravel.
My father was standing on the porch in his boots with his arms folded, and the screen door was open behind him.
"I let her in," Gene said. "She had a badge."
"What does she want?"
"To see where I keep the baby."
"Dad."
"I told her it's a drawer," he said. "She didn't laugh."
The caseworker was in the kitchen, standing very still beside the table.
She was a woman in her fifties in a gray raincoat, with reading glasses on a cord and a clipboard held against her chest.
Junie was in her bouncer by the window, awake, banging a wooden spoon against the tray.
"Mrs. Heyward," the caseworker said. "I'm sorry for the hour. We received a report that a medically fragile infant was left overnight in an unlicensed household."
"She was left with her grandfather."
"The report says an elderly man."
"I'm sixty-four," Gene said from the doorway.
"And no medical supervision. It says the mother works nights and has been removed from her nursing post."
"I was suspended for two days and reinstated on Friday," I said. "The mother is a neonatal nurse. The infant was born at twenty-six weeks."
"I read the chart."
"Then you know the pediatrician signed her off oxygen in March."
The woman looked at Junie.
Junie looked back and put the wet end of the spoon in her own ear.
"Gently, sweetheart," the caseworker said, and her voice changed on the last word, and I felt the whole kitchen let go a little.
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