Chapter 14: Without Me

He hung up and stood at the window for a while.

When he came back, he pulled a chair up next to mine and sat down.

"You heard," he said.

"The whole unit heard."

"Good." He looked at Lucy. "Then nobody can say I didn't mean it."

At eight the next morning they let us hold her hand before they took her.

Her hand was the size of a postage stamp.

Leo bent over the isolette and said something to her I couldn't hear.

Then two nurses wheeled her away, isolette and wires and all, down a hallway we weren't allowed into.

The surgical waiting room had blue chairs and a fish tank with one fish in it.

There was a coffee machine that only made one kind of coffee, and it was terrible.

Libby showed up at eight-thirty with a bag of donuts and her mom.

Libby's mom hugged me for a long time and then sat down and started knitting something tiny and yellow.

"For the little one," she said. "For when she's home."

Nobody said "if".

At nine the board in New York started its meeting.

Leo's phone sat face up on his knee.

He didn't touch it.

It lit up at 9:14 with a text.

He glanced at it and turned it over.

"What was it?" I asked.

"The chair of the board. He wants to know if I've changed my mind."

"Have you?"

He looked at the doors where they'd taken Lucy.

"No."

Libby stopped chewing.

"Wait," she said. "You're getting fired? Right now? While we sit here?"

"Voted out," Leo said. "It's more polite."

"From your own company?"

"From my grandfather's company. My mother has most of the family's shares. The board does what she says."

Libby looked at him for a long moment.

Then she held out the donut bag.

"Take the Boston cream," she said. "I was saving it."

He took the Boston cream.

At 9:51 a nurse came out to say they'd started and Lucy was doing fine so far.

At 10:20 his phone lit up again.

Then again.

Then it started to ring and didn't stop.

He let it buzz across his knee until it went quiet.

Then a text came in, and I saw the first line before he turned it over.

"Effective immediately, the board has..."

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