214 Wills novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Emergency Contact

The nurse lists Rob as Callie's emergency contact, and when she wakes she tells Miles he was not supposed to find the wills.

The surgeon came out at noon and spoke to Rob first.

I was standing right there, and she turned to him and said, "Are you the family?"

"I'm her emergency contact," Rob said.

"Then you can come with me."

"I'm her boyfriend," I said. "Four years. We live together."

The surgeon looked at her tablet and then at me.

"I'm sorry. The first name on her file is Mr. Garland's."

Rob put a hand on my arm.

"Miles, it's just a form. She filled it out years ago. I'll tell you everything."

I took my arm back.

The surgeon told the two of us together, because I would not move from the spot.

They had taken out her spleen.

They had set her left leg and put in a rod.

She had two cracked ribs and a bruise across her hip in the shape of a bumper.

"She was lucky," the surgeon said. "Another few inches and it would be a different conversation."

Rob closed his eyes and let out a long, shaking sigh.

It was a good sigh. It looked completely real.

"Can we see her?" he asked.

"One at a time, when she's awake. Family only."

The surgeon nodded at Rob.

I had to stand in the hallway and watch him walk through the doors.

Ten minutes later my sister came around the corner in green scrubs, still wearing her hospital badge from the other side of town.

Beth Cowan is five foot four and has never lowered her voice in a waiting room.

"Where is she? Is she okay? Why do you look like that?"

"She's alive," I said. "They took her spleen. They won't let me in."

"What do you mean they won't let you in?"

I told her.

Then I opened the binder on the chair between us and watched my sister's face change.

She turned pages with one finger. She did not say anything for a full minute.

Beth is an ER nurse. She has seen men hold a gunshot wound and tell her it was a fall.

"That's him?" she said, nodding at the doors.

"That's him."

"How long has he been in there?"

"Since noon. He was here before I got back from the apartment."

"Before you got back." Beth closed the binder. "Miles. Who called him?"

"The hospital. That's what he said."

"I'm a nurse. The hospital doesn't call the emergency contact for a hit-and-run until the patient's out of surgery."

I had not known that.

I looked at the doors, and then I looked at her.

Beth stood up and straightened her badge.

"Okay," she said. "I'm going to go be annoying at the desk. You stay here."

She came back an hour later with a plastic bracelet and an expression of enormous satisfaction.

"Visiting hours are visiting hours," she said. "I told them I'm a charge nurse at St. Anne's. The man at the desk found a second name."

"What second name?"

"Yours, apparently. It's on the next line. Somebody forgot to read down."

I was in the room by two o'clock.

Callie lay in the bed under a thin blanket with a tube in her arm and a cast to the thigh.

Her face was gray. There was a long scrape down her cheek.

Rob sat on the left side of her bed. He was holding her hand.

She was holding it back.

I stopped in the doorway.

Her eyes were half open. She turned her head slowly and found me.

"Miles," she said. Her voice was a dry whisper.

I crossed the room and stood at the foot of the bed.

"I'm here, Cal. I'm right here."

"You found them."

She was not asking.

I had the binder in my hand, down by my leg. I lifted it enough for her to see.

She shut her eyes.

"You weren't supposed to find those," she said.

It was not a lie and it was not an explanation.

It was just the truth, said in a flat, tired voice, and every word of it landed on me.

Rob squeezed her fingers.

"Don't talk, Callie. You don't have to explain anything."

"I want to explain," she said, and then she stopped, because the pain came up through her.

Her hand tightened on his.

She did not let go of him.

I looked at their two hands, and I thought of two hundred and fourteen Sundays.

"Cal," I said. "Talk to me. Tell me what that is."

She looked at me, and her green eyes filled.

Rob said, quietly, "She needs rest, Miles."

Callie turned her face toward the window.

"Please go home," she said.

"Cal."

"Please, Miles. Go home."

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