Chapter 21: Seven Hours

Donovan's POV

The surgical waiting room on the fourth floor had twelve chairs, a television with the sound off, and a clock I'd stopped looking at.

They had taken her through the doors at eleven.

It was a quarter past two.

I sat with my elbows on my knees and my hands hanging, and I looked at the blood dried black along my cuff.

I had put Desmond Kilbride's back against a table, and I did not regret it.

What I regretted was that I had been in the lobby when I should have been in the room.

Dermot came back from the machine with two paper cups and gave me one.

"It's terrible," he said. "Drink it."

"I'm not thirsty."

"It's not for thirst. It's so you can say you did something with your hands."

I drank it.

It was terrible.

Across from us, Deirdre's mother sat with her purse in her lap and her good coat still on.

She had not spoken to me.

She had asked the nurse if she could wait in the same room as the man her husband called a rat.

The nurse had said it was a public waiting room.

An hour ago she had gone to the window and stood with her forehead against the glass.

I had left her alone.

At half past two the elevator opened.

A volunteer in a pink smock rolled out a wheelchair, and in it, wrapped in a hospital blanket with her hair flat, sat Maeve.

She had come straight from the ballroom.

She still wore the pale gown under the blanket.

"They said I couldn't," she said to the volunteer. "Thank you for letting me."

The volunteer patted her shoulder and left.

Maeve looked around the room.

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