I Lost My Baby Because My Husband Waited for His Best Friend's Permission novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Seven to Two

The boardroom at University Hospital had a long oak table and a portrait of a founder who looked disappointed in everyone.

Nine trustees sat along one side of it.

Kip sat alone across from them with the hospital counsel, in a gray suit I had last seen on a hanger in his hall.

I sat in the second row behind him, with my mother's hand clamped around my wrist.

Whitney sat in the front row on the other side, in black, with a pearl pin at her collar.

Dalton sat beside her, looking at his knees.

He hadn't looked at me once.

Whitbread's attorney spoke first, as the text had said.

He was a smooth man with a leather folder, and he thanked the board for its time.

"This is not about blame," he said. "The Whitbread family grieves with Mrs. Hazard. We only ask the board to consider what Dr. Neville himself documented."

He took a single page out of the folder.

"His own trauma note, timed at the scene. Quote: no fetal movement, no fetal heart tones on palpation."

I stopped breathing.

"In other words, by the time Dr. Neville knelt on that floor, the child had already died.

"Any delay in calling an ambulance, however regrettable, cost nothing.

"And yet this surgeon allowed a family to believe otherwise, and then refused to sign a simple transport form."

Behind me my mother made a small, low sound.

I heard it from far away.

No fetal movement.

On the floor, on the marble, with the whole lobby watching, I had begged him to tell them my daughter was thirty weeks.

He had said, I'll tell them.

I looked at the back of Kip's neck.

He did not turn around.

Whitney turned, though. She looked right at me with her gentle blue eyes, and she tilted her head, so sorry for my loss.

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