The Day Two Sisters Burned for Husbands Who Never Came novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: What the Phone Said

A hospital officer reads Calla's call log, refuses, then types what Calla asks for. Ansel won't lie but won't leave. Dalton's hand reaches the door.

The woman from patient affairs sat down on the edge of the visitor chair and read my phone.

She read slowly, with her glasses pulled down.

I stood by the window with the IV pole and told her what the screen could not.

"The first call is at 6:38," I said. "He doesn't answer. The second is 6:43, and he ends it after one ring."

"I see that."

"The third call is at 7:05, in the ambulance. A woman answers. She says his name is Dalton and he can't come to the phone because he's holding her hand."

The officer scrolled up.

"There's a text from your husband at 5:58," she said. She read it out loud. "Late tonight. Imogen's having a rough one. Don't wait up. Love you."

"He sent it from Station 9," I said. "She was in the day room. I could see them from my kitchen."

The officer took her glasses off and set them on the clipboard.

"Mrs. MacDuff, I'm sorry. I've worked in this building for nineteen years. I've never read a log like this one."

"I need you to write something for me," I said.

"What do you need?"

"My son and my sister's daughter are in your NICU under MacDuff. Their fathers are walking down the hall right now. Both men have badges, and one of them can pull anything he wants out of a records room."

"A court would have to say they can see the children."

"A court will say they can see them in about a week," I said. "And then Dalton will stand up in a uniform and say he is a hero who was never told. Corey will say it too."

She looked at me.

"I want a paper that says the babies died in the fire," I said. "Both of them. And that the mothers left against medical advice, and nobody knows where."

The officer stood up so fast the chair legs scraped.

"That is not something I can do," she said. "That is falsifying a medical record. That is a crime, and it's also cruel, and I don't think you know how cruel."

"I know exactly how cruel it is."

I had not raised my voice.

"They told me nobody was coming," I said. "I'd like them to find out what that feels like."

"Your sister's husband?"

"I'm not asking for my sister. She'll decide for herself. I'm asking for my son."

The officer went to the door and opened it a hand's width.

Ansel was in the chair outside, with his helmet on the floor between his boots.

He'd been listening, and he didn't pretend he hadn't.

"Mrs. MacDuff," he said.

"Calla."

"Calla." His eyes didn't leave my face. "I carried you out of that building. I'll sit outside this door all night. I'll walk you and the babies to my truck if I have to."

"But?"

"But I won't lie to Dalton Overpeck. If he asks me to my face where you are, I'll say what I know."

"Then don't be where he can ask," I said.

He nodded slowly, and he didn't move out of the chair.

From the hall came a raised voice, and I knew it before the first word was out.

"I'm looking for my wife," Dalton said. "Calla Overpeck. Pregnant, brought in from a fire on Cedar Street. And her sister, Bree Haskell. Where are they?"

"Sir, there's no one admitted under those names," the NICU nurse said.

"They were on that ladder. Engine 14 pulled two pregnant women off the fourth floor, I heard it on the radio. Where are they?"

"Dal," Imogen said. Her voice was thin and kind. "Dal, sit down, breathe. Please. You're shaking."

"I'm not sitting down."

"Come here. Come on. Let me."

I put my eye to the gap in the door.

Dalton was standing in the middle of the hall with one fist against his mouth.

Imogen had both of her hands around his other hand, and she was rubbing his knuckles with her thumb.

Corey was behind them, staring through the NICU glass at the empty cribs by the wall.

My husband let his head drop onto Imogen's shoulder.

"I told dispatch we were down," he said, so quietly I barely heard. "God forgive me, it was only twenty minutes. I thought it would hold."

"You couldn't have known it was her," Imogen said. "It's all right, it's all right."

"It wasn't all right," Dalton said. "It was my building."

He had known.

He had known the address, and he had still put his crew out of service.

I stopped breathing.

Behind me, the officer made a sound in her throat.

She was reading over my shoulder, and she'd seen the same thing I had.

"Give me the phone," she said.

I handed it over.

She sat down at the computer in the corner of the room, and she began to type, slowly, with two fingers.

"I'm doing this for you," she said without looking up. "I am not doing it for them. And when this comes apart, and it will, you do not say my name."

"I'll never say it."

Out in the hall, Dalton had stopped talking.

I watched the doorknob.

It turned a quarter inch under somebody's hand.

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