When He Finally Chose Me I Was Gone novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Missing

Soren reports her missing, and Linnea tells the officer she left on purpose while Astrid sends her a kind text with a photo of the hospital bed.

They wheeled me down to the lobby in a chair with my cast on a pillow.

Two officers stood by the gift shop, a tall man with a notebook and a younger woman who looked at my hand and then looked away.

"Mrs. Lund?" the man asked.

"Holm," I said. "I never changed my name."

He wrote that down.

"Your husband reported you missing at seven this morning. He says you left a hospital in Minneapolis without discharge papers after a serious injury. He is very worried."

"I'm sure he is."

"Ma'am, are you here of your own free will?"

"Yes."

"Is anyone holding you, threatening you or keeping you from leaving?"

"No. The only person who tried to keep me was a woman at the ER desk with a clipboard."

The younger officer almost laughed, and covered it.

I told them I was thirty-three years old, that I had signed myself out, and that I wanted no one to know where I was staying.

"We have to tell him you're safe," the tall man said. "We don't have to say where."

"That's all I ask."

"Is there anything you'd like us to pass along?"

I thought about it.

I thought about three hundred people clapping.

I thought about my husband's face when he said, "Everything I've built, I owe to you."

"Tell him to watch his own video," I said.

"His own video?"

"He'll know."

The officer wrote it down without looking up, and then he shut the notebook.

"Take care of that hand, Ms. Holm."

They left through the sliding doors.

Elin pushed my chair into the family waiting room and shut the door.

She sat down across from me with her phone in both hands.

"He called me too," she said. "Half a dozen times. I didn't answer. He left a voicemail at six this morning."

"Delete it."

"Lin, I think you should hear it once. Then I'll delete it."

I looked at the closed door.

Then I nodded.

She put the phone on speaker.

At first there was only breathing.

Then my husband's voice came out of the little speaker, thick and rough.

"Elin, it's Soren. Please pick up. I'm at Hennepin County. They said Linnea left, and nobody knows where. I need to know she's okay."

There was a long pause.

"I didn't see her, Elin. I swear to God, in the smoke I didn't see her. If I had, I'd have..."

His voice broke.

"Astrid is in the burn unit. Her leg is hurt, and her hands are burned, and I couldn't leave her there alone. Please. Tell Linnea I'm sorry. Tell her I'll fix it."

The message ended.

Elin hit delete.

Neither of us said anything.

I had watched him look at me with my own eyes.

I had it on video, and he still stood in a hospital and swore to God that he had not seen me.

I wondered which of us he was lying to.

"Maybe he really believes it," Elin said quietly.

"That's worse."

"Why?"

"Because it means he can make himself not see me whenever he needs to."

She took my good hand and said nothing.

I did not cry.

I think I was past it.

Then my phone, which I had switched on to check the time, buzzed on my lap.

The number was not in my contacts, but I knew the area code.

It was a text from Astrid.

I read it with my thumb under the words.

"Linnea, it's Astrid. I'm so sorry for everything. I didn't see you under that truss, and I know Soren didn't either. He's been going out of his mind. Please call him. Nobody is angry. We just want you safe. Love, A."

I read it twice.

It was kind.

It was careful.

It was exactly what a woman who loved me would write.

Underneath it was a photo.

It showed a hospital bed with white sheets and a bandaged hand on the blanket.

A larger, familiar hand held the bandaged one.

I knew the cuff link on the wrist.

I had given it to him for our first anniversary.

The caption said, "He hasn't left my side."

I looked at the time stamp in the corner of the picture.

It said 3:40 a.m.

At five that morning, before I walked out of the ER, my husband had come around the curtain of my bed and told me he had been looking for me everywhere.

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