Chapter 4: The Guest Room

My sister Hattie let herself in with her spare key at noon, still in her navy paramedic jacket from the night shift.

"I brought you a real sandwich," she said, and held up a paper bag. "Turkey, mustard, no sprouts. You eat like a bird, Lexi-Lexi."

"Hat, sit down."

She looked at my face and sat.

I had decided to tell her in order, one fact at a time.

The monitor.

The three-twelve clip.

The sticky note.

The eleven months.

When I got to the part about the microphone, Hattie put the sandwich down.

When I played her the 3:40 clip, she put her hand over her mouth.

"Mama's here," Haley whispered on the speaker, soft and cracked. "Mama's here, my girl."

"I'm going to kill her," Hattie said, very calmly.

"You are not."

"I'm going to put her down the stairs. I'm a medical professional, I know which stairs."

"Hat."

"I'll drive the ambulance over her and call it a response drill."

I laughed, and it pulled at my stitches, and I laughed again anyway.

Hattie was crying too, and she wiped her face with the back of her wrist, furious about it.

"Okay," she said. "Okay. Maybe she lost a baby. Maybe she's confused and sad and fixated. That would be a reason."