After My Miscarriage, My Husband Locked Me Out novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: What It Cost

Cillian's POV

I had rehearsed three versions of this in the car, and I used none of them.

I stood in front of Hannah with my back to her, because I had no right to touch her and I could at least be in the way.

Gwendolyn Callister still held the microphone.

She smiled at me from the stage, and her voice filled the room through the speakers.

It was the voice I had heard on the ward phone at two o'clock on the third of October.

"Dr. Tarleton," she said sweetly. "This is a private matter for the family."

"Mrs. Callister, I'll take that."

I held out my hand.

She looked at the board chair, and the chair, a heavy white-haired man I had worked under for nine years, gave one small nod.

She gave me the microphone.

I turned to the room.

Four hundred people, in black and silver, with their forks down.

"I'm Cillian Tarleton. I'm an attending in the emergency department."

My voice carried further than I wanted.

"On the first of October Hannah Birkett was my patient. I wrote her orders that night and I did her procedure the next day. Her chart says she lost her pregnancy at fourteen weeks. I won't read it to you, because it belongs to her."

Nobody coughed.

"I'm telling you what it says so that no one in this room repeats a lie about it again."

I saw Chandler start toward the steps.

His boss caught his sleeve and said something short, and Chandler sat down.

"There is something else, and it's mine," I said. "At two o'clock on Friday the third, a woman phoned my ward and said she was Ms. Birkett's mother-in-law. She asked when Ms. Birkett would be discharged."

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