Chapter 5: The Boy She Sent Away

Nobody in bay six moved.

Gavin looked at the man in the doorway.

"Hayes?" he said.

"You look well, Gavin," said Hayes.

"I was thirteen when you left."

"I remember."

Merritt found his voice first.

"This is a private family matter."

"It's a public emergency room," Hayes said.

"I'm standing in a hallway."

Adele pushed herself up on the pillow.

Her color had come back in patches, and with it the soft, patient voice.

"How kind of you to come, Hayes."

"You always did turn up when somebody was ill."

"I wasn't told anyone was ill."

"I came for Frank Dunning's daughter," he said.

Gavin turned to me.

"You know him?"

"My father trained him," I said.

"Frank Dunning taught me to measure twice," Hayes said to Gavin, in the same quiet tone.

"He took me in when your mother sent me away."

"I didn't send you away," Adele said.

"I put a seventeen-year-old on a bus with a suitcase and a letter saying his father wanted him gone," Hayes said.

"Your husband couldn't speak for four months."

"I don't think he wrote it."

Teddy made a noise.

Merritt said, "That's quite enough."

"I called for three months."

"You were angry."

"You answered every call," Hayes said.

"You told me my father didn't want to hear from me."

"Then you changed the number."

Adele's hand lay very still on the blanket.

"This is hardly the place."

"No," said Hayes.

"I'm not here for you."

He looked at me.

"Do you want to stay?"

I looked at Adele in her pearls and her hospital gown, and she looked back at me with something I had never seen on her.

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