“Call the police.”
For a second, I thought I had misunderstood the doctor.
The emergency room around me kept moving.
Shoes squeaked against the floor.
A monitor sounded somewhere behind a curtain.
Nurses passed carrying supplies.
But those three words seemed to stop everything inside my head.
I stared at her.
“Police?”
The doctor did not soften her expression.
She lowered Noah’s dirty blanket into a hospital bag and glanced toward the room where they were treating my son.
“Your baby is seven days old and has a fever.
Your wife was brought in unconscious.
Both of them arrived in conditions that require us to ask serious questions about what happened at home.”
I swallowed.
“They were with my mother and sister.”
“I heard you.”
There was no accusation in her voice toward me, but there was no reassurance either.
She asked when I had last seen Emily before that morning.
I told her everything.
Four days.
The job emergency.
My mother promising Emily would be safe.
Ashley joking that I acted like I was the only person who loved them.
The calls.
Emily’s cracked lips on the screen.
The moment she whispered, “Eth…” before my mother took the phone away.
Noah’s strange crying.
Ashley’s laugh.
With every sentence, the doctor’s face became stiller.
“When did you return?” she asked.
“About an hour ago.
Maybe less.
I got home before sunrise.”
“And you came straight here?”
“Yes.
Our neighbor drove us.”
The nurse beside her wrote something down.
I suddenly understood how my story sounded.
A husband leaves his recovering wife and newborn child for four days.
He returns to find one unconscious and the other burning with fever.
I felt sick.
“I shouldn’t have gone,” I said.
The doctor looked directly at me.
“Right now, what matters is establishing what happened and keeping them safe.”
Safe.
The word cut harder than anything else.
Because I had used that exact word before I left.
Your wife and my grandson will be safe.
My mother’s promise replayed in my head.
A hospital staff member brought me a pair of disposable socks because I was still barefoot.
I hadn’t even noticed until then.
My jeans were wet from the rain.
Noah’s warmth seemed trapped against the front of my hoodie even though he was no longer in my arms.
I sat outside Emily’s room and called my mother.
She answered on the fourth ring.
