Everyone stared at the monitor.
Nothing.
They shocked her a second time.
Still nothing.
A nurse injected something into her IV and measured her pulse manually again. She looked up at the doctor and shook her head with a frown.
“All clear!”
The doctor adjusted the knobs on the machine before setting the paddles once again.
Amelia’s body jumped even higher.
The monitor made a blip sound and the flat line started to jump up and down again.
The doctor’s shoulders visibly relaxed.
“Why did that happen?” I asked.
He returned the paddles to the portable machine they’d wheeled in. “Could be a number of reasons.” He shook his head. “A blood clot, electrolyte abnormalities, or even just her system shutting down because it’s exhausted. The last few months have been tough on her body, including her C-section.”
“A blood clot? Because of the medicine she was given? They told me that was a risk when they asked for permission to try it.”
The doctor held up his hands. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We don’t know that there was a blood clot yet. And even if there was, patients who spend months in a coma are at a high risk for such a thing.”
I rubbed my forehead. “Is she going to be okay?”
He looked over at the monitor. “She’s stabilized now. But like it’s been since the beginning, we have to take this one step at a time. Let’s start with running some tests to see what we’re up against now.”
I nodded and blew out a loud puff of air. “Okay.”
? ? ?
The following morning, I’d just finished holding Eloise in the NICU again and returned to Amelia’s room to check on her. The monitor showed her heartbeat was normal, so I sat down by her bedside and shut my eyes for a minute. I’d been here all night, afraid to go home and have something else happen. Then a woman knocked at the open door.
She smiled. “Hi, Mr. Crawford. I’m Kate Egert. I’m from the hospital’s social services department. We met a while back when Ms. Evans was first brought in.”
I nodded, though she barely looked familiar, and stood. “Sure. Good to see you.”
She seemed hesitant. “Do you think we could talk outside for a minute?”
It was never good news when they didn’t want to talk in front of Amelia. But how much worse could shit get than the last two days? “Sure.”
Outside in the hall, she pointed. “Why don’t we go sit in the family room?”
I glanced back at Amelia and shook my head. “Could we just talk here? She’s had a rough twenty-four hours.”
“Oh, sure. Yes, of course.” She took a deep breath before holding out a folded paper. “I’m sorry to pile on with everything you’re going through. But the paternity test came back.”
I froze.
She unfolded the paper in her hand and looked into my eyes. “According to the DNA test, you are not Eloise’s father.”
CHAPTER 32
Merrick
I stood across the street for a third day in a row.
It felt like I was starting to establish something of a routine: Get up hungover at the ass crack of dawn. Take two Motrin with a gallon of Gatorade and let the water sluice over me in the shower. Put on a baseball cap, sunglasses, and dark zip-up sweatshirt, walk down more than forty flights of stairs and slip out the service entrance to minimize the chances of running into anyone from the office. Then hike it over to 19th Street to stand in a doorway that reeked like piss and watch a man I loathed from a distance.