Chapter 4: Night Shift

Three days later I took Poppy back to St. Anne's for her follow-up, and for the first time in six years I walked in through the staff door.

The charge nurse at the ER desk looked up and put her pen down.

"Nina Brandt," she said. "I don't believe it."

"Haldorsen," I said. "For another few months."

"Not in here, you're not." She came around the counter and hugged me hard, and Poppy stared up at her with a cookie crumb on her lip.

Three of the night nurses came out of the break room. One of them was crying a little.

None of them mentioned my husband. They all knew exactly what had happened in their waiting room, and they were being kind about it.

Jonas took Poppy's temperature himself in the first exam room. It was 98.4.

He listened to her chest with a stethoscope she was allowed to hold afterward.

"Doctor," Poppy said seriously, "do I get another sticker?"

"You get two," he said. "One for each ear."

She giggled. It was the first real sound I had heard out of her in three days.

I leaned against the wall and watched him fold a sticker onto her sleeve with those big careful hands.

He glanced up and caught me looking.

"She's fine, Nina," he said quietly. "No more seizures, no infection, no reason to worry. You did everything right."

"I should have driven the minute she felt warm."

"You drove the minute your husband hung up on you." His voice was steady. "That's not late. That's a man putting a delay in your path."

I didn't answer. I had not said that sentence to anyone, and he had said it for me.

"I need her full chart," I said instead. "The whole record from that night, with times. Everything."

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