Husband's Mistress Killed Wrong Girl in OR, Now He's Mourning His Real Sister novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Eulogy

Mitchell weeps at Kit's funeral and calls her his real sister while Camilla holds Mara's arm. Daniel whispers that the anesthesia record is a separate file.

"Ma'am? Are you still there?"

"I'm here," I said. "I never waived anything. I want that written on the file with my name."

"I can add a note. But it's already been released."

"Then add the note."

I hung up, and I sat on the edge of the tub with the water running so Mitchell couldn't hear me breathe.

At seven the next morning I called the funeral home myself.

The director was a gentle man with a low, careful voice.

"Her husband, I mean her brother-in-law, told us the family wanted a quick cremation," he said.

"He's not her family. I'm her only family. I'm her next of kin, and I'm telling you nothing happens to her without my signature."

"Of course. I'll put that in writing today. I'm so sorry, Mrs. Bannister."

"Is she still at your building?"

"She's in our care, yes."

"Then she stays there until I say."

He said he understood.

Kit's funeral was on Saturday at St. Anselm's, the church where we buried our mother.

I asked for the casket to be open.

The director hesitated, and I said I was a nurse and I had seen worse.

I stood at the front and looked at my sister in the blue dress.

Her curls had been combed flat, and they did not look like hers.

I looked at the inside of her elbows and the backs of her hands, the way I look at everyone who comes into my unit.

There was a small bruise on the left hand, where an IV had been, and nothing else I could name.

I had no proof of anything. I only knew she looked wrong, and that I was not allowed to say so.

Mitchell came up beside me and put his arm around my waist.

"You don't have to stay here," he whispered.

"I want to."

He bent and kissed her forehead, and his shoulders shook.

I watched him do it, and I felt something go cold in me, because the shaking was real.

The church filled up.

Half of Metro General had come, in dark suits, with their hands folded.

Camilla sat in the second pew in a black dress, and she squeezed my fingers as I passed.

When the priest was done, Mitchell stood and walked to the front with a single sheet of paper in his hand.

"I lost my little sister, Beth, when I was fifteen," he said.

His voice shook, and the whole room went quiet.

"She was nine. I decided that day I would learn to fix the thing that had failed her."

He looked at the casket.

"Then I married Mara, and she came with Kit. Kit made me eat her terrible first cookies. Kit called me at midnight to ask about her boyfriends. For six years I had a sister again."

He was crying openly now.

"Kit was my real sister. I will carry that for the rest of my life."

I heard women sobbing in the pews around me.

A cardiologist across the aisle was wiping his eyes with a program.

I sat very still with my hands in my lap and my face wet, and I let everyone see me grieve.

That was the part I had never expected.

The man who had stood in that operating room and not saved her was not pretending to cry.

I did not understand it, and I put it away to think about later.

Camilla read a poem, and she read it well.

Her voice broke on the last line, and she touched my shoulder on her way back to her seat.

I saw a man standing alone at the back of the church, against the wall, in a wrinkled gray suit.

It was the anesthesiologist from the hallway.

He looked worse than he had at the hospital.

He did not sit and he did not sing, and he did not look at Mitchell at all.

His hand was pressed flat against his chest.

At the graveside Mitchell held my arm so tightly I would have bruises in the morning.

"I'm right here," he kept saying. "I'm not going anywhere. I'll be with you every minute from now on."

I said thank you.

When the casket went down, I turned my face into his coat, and over his shoulder I watched the anesthesiologist walk back toward the parking lot alone.

At the reception in the church hall, people lined up to hug me, and several told me stories about Kit that I had never heard.

I stood by the coffee urn and smiled.

The man in the gray suit came up the side aisle with a paper cup in his hand.

His hospital badge hung backward on its lanyard.

When he turned it to set his cup down, I read it: Daniel Westerfield, MD, Anesthesiology.

The cord around his neck was still there, under his shirt collar.

He didn't say hello.

He set his cup down on the table beside me and stared at the sugar packets.

"The anesthesia record is a separate file from the surgical chart," he said, very low. "It's kept in a different system. Ask for it in writing."

"Why are you telling me?"

He finally looked at me.

His eyes were red and sunken, and what I saw in them was not sympathy.

"Because nobody has asked for it yet," he said, and walked out through the kitchen door.

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