They Never Picked Up My Calls, So I Made Dolls That Answer novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: The Ward

"Tonight?" I said. "They're taking them tonight?"

"Housekeeping is collecting them at eight," the nurse said. "I'm sorry. I fought it."

It was five fifteen.

I looked at Fletcher.

He was already opening the driver's door.

"Hospital," he said. "Get in."

By the time we parked, my phone had buzzed three hundred times.

Someone had clipped the morning show. Someone else had found my name.

"Imagine being the sister who drove her to a WINDOW."

"Keepsake Dolls is her company. Don't buy from abusers."

"She makes toys for sick kids??? That's sick."

Fletcher reached over and turned my phone face down on the seat.

"Read it later," he said. "Or never."

The fourth floor smelled like hand sanitizer and macaroni.

The nurse met me at the elevator. She looked like she'd been crying in a supply closet.

"They're in their rooms. The parents don't know yet."

"Then I'll tell them."

I didn't make a speech.

I went door to door.

Room 412, the boy with the shaved head. His mother was back, holding his doll while he slept.

Room 415, twin girls, one sick, one sleeping in the parent chair with a doll of her own.

Room 420, a father who'd driven up from Tucson and hadn't changed his shirt in three days.

"The foundation is taking the dolls tonight," I told each of them. "Because of something my sister says about me in a book. I'm not here to argue about the book. I'm here because your kid shouldn't lose their mom's voice over it."

The father from Tucson stood up.

"Like hell they're taking it."

At eight the housekeeping cart came off the elevator.

Eleven parents were standing in the hallway in their socks.

The housekeeper looked at them, then at her clipboard, then pushed her empty cart right back into the elevator.

"Not my fight," she said. "God bless."

The next morning at nine the parents came with me to the foundation's office on the first floor.

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