He Gave Our Helicopter Away, So I Stopped Waiting to Be Rescued novel · Chapter 18 of 24
Chapter 18: A Healthy Daughter
The welfare officer was fifty or so, in a grey coat that was too heavy for the heat, with a lanyard and a clipboard.
She stood on the dock with Corinna a step behind her, and Corinna wore a dove-grey dress and a look of deep, patient sorrow.
"Mrs. Ostby," the officer said. "I'm sorry for the hour. I was told the situation was urgent."
"It's all right."
"This is Ms. Frost, who made the report."
"We've met," I said.
Corinna put her hand on her heart.
"Lena, I'm only here because I care about you. And about Tilda. I couldn't sleep thinking of her out there."
"You were fired yesterday on the helipad," I said. "In front of forty people."
"I was dismissed in the middle of a very emotional morning, and I've forgiven it."
The officer looked from one of us to the other and wrote something down.
I could feel the whole dock listening.
Fishermen sat on their boats with tea, and two kitchen staff pretended to scrub a table, and Fraser stood behind me, quiet and enormous.
"May I see the child?" the officer said.
"Come on up."
She came into the bungalow and stood in the middle of it without saying a word.
She looked at the cot.
She looked at the bowls of rice and fish, at the folded clothes in a drawer, at the clean bottle on the shelf, at the changing mat with the diaper bag on it.
She picked up the rabbit.
"She sleeps with this?"
"She can't sleep without it. We kept it dry all night."
"Dry," the officer said, and wrote it down.
Tilda woke up in the cot and looked at all of us.
She had a crease on her cheek from the sheet and one wet hand in her mouth.
Then she saw Fraser in the doorway and held both arms up, and said a long, urgent string of nothing.
He didn't move.
He looked at me.
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