Chapter 7: Bed Four

Winslow unfolded the paper in the middle of the lobby.

It was a nurse's handwriting, in blue ballpoint.

St. Mary's Medical Center. ICU, bed 4. Rhona Holloway. Admitted Tuesday, 4:51 p.m. Next-of-kin order signed by Sybil Holloway. Hurry.

I read it over his arm, inside my coat.

He read it twice.

His face did not change at all.

Then the paper began to shake.

"Where did you get this?" he said.

"A girl I went to nursing school with before I switched to pharmacy," Dorinda said. "She works nights on that floor. She saw your mother sign it."

"My mother."

"Winslow. She's been there since Tuesday."

He looked up from the paper.

I had seen him angry, and cold, and very tired.

I had never seen him afraid.

"She said she was dying," he said.

His voice was almost not a voice.

"She called me. She said she was dying. I said..."

He stopped.

"I don't know what you said," Dorinda said. "Whatever it was, you can say it to her face. Drive."

He ran.

Winslow Holloway ran through the lobby of his own building with my coat in his fist, and the guards watched him go.

Dorinda caught up and climbed into the passenger seat, and he drove with both hands on the wheel.

He ran two red lights.

I sat in the folds of the coat between them, and I was so frightened I forgot to be angry.

St. Mary's smelled like floor cleaner and hand sanitizer.

I knew that smell.

It was the last thing I remembered before the dark.

The ICU doors had a buzzer and a camera.

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