The Life I Chose novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: March

"Why me?" I said.

"I asked her that," Holt's father said. "She said you're the only one who never lied to her."

Daniel was already out of bed and pulling on his jeans in the dark.

"I'll drive," he said. "You'll steer like it's a shopping cart."

We got to Women and Infants at a quarter past five.

The baby had come at five past.

Holt's father met us at the doors to the maternity unit, grey-faced and grinning, with his tie in his pocket.

"Seven pounds four ounces," he said. "He's got all his fingers. I counted them twice. The nurse told me to stop."

Then his face changed.

He looked past me, down the corridor.

Holt was sitting on a plastic chair by the elevators.

He was in a cheap blue blazer with a name badge from the Honda lot still pinned to it.

He had a bunch of gas-station carnations on his knee, still in their cellophane.

There was a security guard standing about ten feet from him, not doing anything, just standing.

Holt saw me.

He stood up.

"Margo. Tell them. Tell them to let me in. He's my son."

The guard took one step.

"Your sister made the list," said Holt's father. "You're not on it. Sit down, Holt."

"Dad, please."

"Sit down."

Holt sat down.

He put the carnations on the chair beside him.

We went through the doors without him, and he watched us go.

Kendall's room was at the end of the hall.

The blinds were up, and the sun was just starting to come up grey over the parking garage.

She was sitting up in the bed in a hospital gown, her hair a wreck, her face swollen and blotchy and completely different.

She was holding him.

A small red face in a striped blanket, a knitted hat on his head that was too big and badly made.

"I finished it," she said when she saw me looking. "Barely. It's lopsided."

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