Chapter 9: The Footage

I found Ansel in the NICU hallway at six in the morning.

He held a cup of coffee he had forgotten to drink.

He had slept in a chair, and the crescent marks I'd left on his arm had turned dark red.

"Sit," he said.

"I'd rather stand."

I stood.

Through the glass, my daughter was asleep. In the next box over, my niece was asleep.

"Rule three," I said. "You don't ask me about Patsy unless I ask first."

"I remember."

"I'm asking."

He set the coffee on the windowsill.

"What did she say?"

He did not pretend he didn't understand.

"In the trauma bay," I said. "Seven months. You've been mailing me envelopes. You sat with her for ninety minutes. What did my sister say?"

Ansel looked at me for a long moment.

"I can tell you," he said. "But there's something else I'd like you to see first. It will make the words make sense."

"What is it?"

"The door camera."

My mouth went dry.

"I've had a copy since January," he said. "I asked the security chief to keep one outside the risk office."

"I don't think anyone else has watched it start to finish. I have."

"Will it show me what I did?"

"It will show you what happened."

The security office was in the basement, beside the loading dock.

The chief of security, a heavy man with a gray mustache, stood up when I came in.

He took off his cap and did not say a word.

He pulled out a chair for me and another for himself.

Then he set a laptop on the desk in front of us.

"It has sound," he said. "Do you want me to turn it down?"

"No."

Ansel stood behind me.

The picture came up in grainy black and white.

It showed the corridor at the ER entrance, with a clock in the corner reading a quarter past eight.

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