The Silence Between Us: A Vow to Return novel · Chapter 10 of 24
Chapter 10: Family Only
We reached the hospital in Chicago a few minutes past one in the morning.
Nathan had driven the whole way without speaking, with both hands tight on the wheel.
I hadn't asked to come.
He hadn't asked me to stay behind.
At the cardiac unit's glass doors, a nurse in blue scrubs looked up from her desk.
"I'm Nathan Mercer," he said. "My father came in tonight. Harold Mercer."
"Yes." She checked her screen. "Family only after midnight. The patient listed three visitors."
"I'm his son."
"You're on the list."
She looked past him at me.
"And you are?"
"Hannah Mercer. I'm his daughter-in-law."
"I'm sorry, ma'am." She turned the screen a few degrees toward herself. "You're not one of the three."
"Who is?"
"His wife, his son, and a Kendra Shaw."
Nathan's head came up fast.
"He listed Kendra?"
"As his emergency contact, too," the nurse said. "She was with him when the ambulance came."
I looked at Nathan.
He was staring at the screen and his face had gone gray.
The doors on the far side of the hall opened and Kendra came out in a rumpled black dress and sneakers, with her eyes red and her arms wrapped around herself.
"Nathan," she said. "Thank God."
She looked at me.
"Hannah, I'm so sorry. They told me I could stay, and I didn't know how to ask them to let you in."
"It's all right," I said.
It wasn't.
I had been seven years in that family, and a woman who had worked for them for fourteen months was on the list.
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