Chapter 16: Interim

I looked at the raised hands for one second.

Then I got into the elevator with my father.

The doors closed on Bryant standing up to shake hands with the cousins.

In the ambulance a paramedic cut my father's sleeve open and said numbers to someone over the radio.

I held his other hand.

The surgeons put two stents in his heart that afternoon.

My mother got to the hospital before they took him in.

She was still in her gardening clothes, dirt on her knees.

She didn't let go of his foot through the blanket until the doors closed between them.

At nine that night a doctor came out to the waiting room.

"He's going to be fine," she said. "If he rests. If he stays away from whatever did this to him."

My mother laughed once, with no sound.

"Then he'll need a different company," she said.

Nicholas sat with us until midnight.

He brought my mother tea she didn't drink, and he found me a sweater from somewhere.

When I fell asleep against his shoulder, he didn't move for an hour.

On Tuesday morning I went to Ferraro Tower.

I had a board seat still. Nobody could take that without a full shareholder meeting.

I put my badge on the reader at the turnstile.

The light turned red.

I tried again.

Red.

The guard at the desk used to give me butterscotch when I was in kindergarten.

He came around the desk looking at his shoes.

"I'm sorry, Miss Ferraro. I got an email at seven. Your access is suspended pending review."

"Whose review?"

He lowered his voice.

"Mr. Bryant's."

On Wednesday the patents went.

Bryant did it in the lobby, at eleven in the morning, with a podium and a row of cameras.

Russell Hartley stood beside him in a pressed shirt and the turquoise buckle.

Shelby stood on Bryant's other side in white, with her hand on his arm.

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