Chapter 14: The Waiting Room

Hamish's POV

At seven in the morning I was sitting in a plastic chair outside room 412 with a paper cup of bad coffee going cold in my hand.

My right hand still ached.

She had held it through nine hours of labor, and the marks of her fingernails were still in my palm.

I kept pressing my thumb into them.

Inside the room, Becky was asleep for the first time in a day, with her son against her chest.

Tamara had gone down the hall to find a toothbrush.

I had told the night nurse I was staying, and she had looked at me, and at the chair, and said, "Family?"

"Driver," I had said.

"Of course," she said, and brought me a blanket.

The elevator opened at the end of the corridor at five past seven.

Russell Harmon came out of it first, still in the dark coat from the park, unshaven, with his eyes swollen.

His mother walked half a step behind him.

Virginia had done her hair and put on pearls, and she carried a gift bag with tissue paper sticking out of the top.

They stopped in front of me.

"Mr. Hollander," Virginia said. "My neighbor with the truck."

"Mrs. Harmon."

"I would like to see my grandson."

"Mrs. Harmon, Becky put you off her visitor list. The hospital has it in writing."

"That list does not apply to a baby's grandmother."

"It applies to everyone she didn't write down."

Russell took a step toward the door, and I stood up and put myself in front of it.

I'm a big man.

I don't use it much, and I try never to be a bully, but I knew exactly how wide I was standing.