Life after Goodbye novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: What Was in the Tea

Dr. Hagan tests the tea and finds a crushed abortion pill, then moves her chart under a new number after finding Brady Street's file was opened four times, once from the Dorsey Supply network.

I told Kendrick I had an early shift at the bakery and left before he woke up.

The Kellner Building was twelve floors of grey glass downtown.

Dr. Hagan's practice was on the fourth.

The waiting room was empty, and a tall man in a rumpled white coat came out of the back before I had sat down.

He was about thirty-six, with black hair gone grey at the temples and the eyes of someone who had been up all night.

"Calla Dorsey," he said. "You brought the jar."

I held my bag against my chest.

"How do you know my name?"

"A woman phoned my private line at six this morning." He rubbed the back of his neck. "She said her name was Calla Dorsey, and that you'd walk in at eight with a jar of tea. Then she hung up."

"What did her voice sound like?"

"Hoarse," he said. "She sounded worn out."

My mouth went dry.

"Dr. Hagan, I don't know how to explain this."

"Neither do I." He held out his hand. "But I'm not in the habit of ignoring a stranger who says a patient is in danger. Give me the jar."

I handed it over.

He held it up to the window and turned it slowly.

"Sit," he said. "The building has its own lab on the second floor. It'll take an hour, maybe less. While we wait, I'd like to hear your baby."

I stared at him.

"You know I'm pregnant."

"Seven weeks, according to the report you're gripping." He nodded at my coat pocket, where the fold of paper stuck out. "Lie back."

I had never been afraid of a little room before.

I lay down on the paper, and he turned the screen so I could see it.

At first there was only grey static.

Then, in the middle, a tiny flicker, fast and steady.

"There," he said quietly. "That's the heartbeat."

I put both hands over my mouth.

I had not cried in the clinic lot, or at the dinner table, or in the bed next to Kendrick.

I cried now, silently, and the little light kept beating on the screen.

Dr. Hagan handed me a box of tissues and looked at the wall until I was finished.

"One-sixty," he said. "Strong. You'll want to keep that one."

"I do," I said. "More than anything."

An hour later the phone on his desk rang.

He listened, said "Thank you," and hung up.

He sat down in the chair across from me, folded his hands, and didn't soften it.

"Your tea has ginger and honey in it. It also has misoprostol, crushed fine and stirred in."

"What is that?"

"It's a pill that ends pregnancies. Two of them in a cup, taken at seven weeks, and you'd have been in an emergency room by midnight."

I felt the room tilt.

"I drank some," I said. "Just a sip. It touched my lip."

"A sip won't hurt you. I checked." He leaned forward. "Who handed you that cup?"

"My sister."

"Your sister knows you're pregnant."

"Half-sister," I said. "And no. Nobody knows. I found out yesterday at two o'clock and told no one."

"Then I need to ask you something else." He turned his monitor so I could see it. "Where did you have your test?"

"The women's clinic on Brady Street."

"I called the director there at seven. She's an old friend. I asked her to read me the access list on your chart."

He scrolled.

"Your result posted at noon yesterday. Two hours before they told you."

"Okay."

"It's been opened four times since. Once by the nurse who called you in."

He stopped on the next line.

"Once at six last night, from a computer registered to Dorsey Supply, Incorporated."

My ears rang.

Dorsey Supply was my father's company.

It was my brother's office, and my husband's, and the front office where Chelsea sat at a desk by the window.

"That's my family," I said.

"I thought it might be." His voice was quiet. "I've moved your chart under a new number. Nobody at Brady Street can see it, and nobody at the Dorsey office will find it."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me. I don't understand what's going on." He looked at the empty jam jar, then at me. "But I know what misoprostol is, and I know who was in a position to hand it to you."

I stood up and put my coat on with unsteady hands.

"Dr. Hagan. If I told you a phone call from the future warned me, would you think I was lying?"

"I'd think you were frightened," he said. "I'd also think a woman who calls my line at six in the morning knows something about tomorrow that I don't."

He walked me to the door.

"One more question, and then you can go. Who knew you were pregnant before you did?"

"Nobody."

"Somebody did," he said.

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