Chapter 14: The Chairman's Lobby

The lobby of St. Brendan's had a banner across the atrium that said GIVE THE GIFT OF LIFE.

Under it stood a table of pamphlets, a local news camera, and the committee chairman in a good grey suit with a pair of gold scissors in his hand.

Forty or fifty people stood around him, nurses, volunteers, and a family holding a photograph of a boy.

I walked straight across the marble with the pack on my shoulder and Donovan one step behind me.

Dermot stayed by the doors and folded his arms.

The chairman saw me when I was ten feet away.

His smile stayed where it was, but his face went grey around it.

"Miss Kilbride," he said. "What a surprise. Are you well?"

"I'd like to ask you something," I said, loud enough for the camera. "Since you're here to talk about donation."

"This isn't the place."

"It's the best place I can think of."

The cameraman had turned the lens on me.

A woman at the pamphlet table straightened up.

She wore a green jacket, and she had a lanyard around her neck, and I had never seen her face before.

"On October twenty-first," I said, "someone in this hospital changed a dead girl's wish. I'd like you to tell this camera who."

The chairman laughed, short and dry.

"I'm afraid Miss Kilbride has been very ill," he said to the room. "Her family has been so worried."

"At 8:12 that morning, you marked her wish withdrawn," I said. "An hour after that, it went to my sister."

"That is a serious accusation."

"Then say it isn't true."

He opened his mouth.

"The committee voted," he said. "The committee allocates fairly. I don't recall the specifics."

"You recall the fork," I said.

He went still.

"At my father's table, when I asked you about the envelope," I said. "You dropped your fork. I have the recording."

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