Chapter 8 - The Room with the Window
Three days later, the rain finally came to Baltimore.
It wasn't a soft, summer shower; it was a heavy, grey downpour that washed three weeks of dust off the oak trees in Patterson Park and turned the gutters along the avenue into fast, brown rivers.
In Room 412 of the West Wing, the window was open three inches at the top, letting in the cool, wet smell of green leaves and wet asphalt.
Sarah Vance was sitting up in bed.
She was still thin—her cheeks hollowed out so that her cheekbones stood up like small shelf rocks under her pale skin—but the grey, tallow look was gone. Her hair had been washed and combed back into a loose tail, and she was wearing a clean yellow gown that belonged to the hospital’s long-term care unit.
Emma was sitting on the edge of the mattress, her legs tucked under her, holding a small plastic cup of apple sauce with a plastic spoon.
Every three seconds, Emma would take a tiny bite, chew it twenty times, and then look up at her mother’s face to make sure her eyes were still open.
“I’m still here, Emma,” Sarah whispered, her voice rough, like dry paper being dragged across wood, but clear.
“Dr. Marcus said if you close your eyes for more than five minutes, I’m supposed to press the red button,” Emma said, pointing her plastic spoon toward the cord hanging from the wall unit.
Sarah reached out her hand—her skin was pale, but her fingers were warm now—and laid her palm over her daughter’s knee.
“Dr. Marcus is very bossy,” Sarah said softly, the shadow of a smile touching the corner of her cracked lips.
“He’s not bossy,” Emma corrected her. “He’s family. He has the ring.”
The door to the room opened softly.
Marcus walked in, carrying a large cardboard box under his arm and two small, glass nursing bottles filled with white fluid.
He set the box on the chair by the window and handed one of the bottles to Sarah.
“Noah took thirty CCs at noon,” Marcus said, pulling a chart from the end of the bed. “His weight’s up to four pounds two ounces. The pediatrician says if he keeps gaining at this rate, we can take him off the warmer by Friday.”
Sarah looked down at the bottle in her hand. A single tear—large, clear, and slow—rolled down her cheek and dropped onto the yellow cotton of her gown.
“And Eli?” she asked, her voice trembling for the first time since she had opened her eyes two days ago.
“Eli’s tougher than he looks,” Marcus said, stepping up to the side of the bed and adjusting the IV line running into her arm. “He’s small, but his heart rate’s ninety-two and his lungs are clear. He’s going to have your chin, Sarah. God help him.”
Sarah let out a small, wet laugh that turned into a soft cough.
“Julian?” she asked quietly, her eyes dropping to the blanket.
Marcus paused, his fingers resting on the flow regulator of the IV line.
“Julian’s in Towson,” Marcus said flatly. “The public defender says he’s looking at five years for the arson and the fraud. He signed the final waiver this morning. He won't be coming back to Lineboro.”
Sarah didn't look up, but her shoulders dropped two inches—not with sorrow, but with the immense, terrifying relief of a woman who has spent three years waiting for a heavy door to fall on her head.
“The farm?” she whispered.
Marcus reached into the cardboard box on the chair, pulled out the English biscuit box, and set it on the overbed table beside her tray.
“The farm is held in trust for Emma and the boys,” Marcus said. “The state police cleared the lane yesterday. The county water department turned the meter back on at eight o’clock this morning, and a crew from the hospital’s facilities team is out there right now putting a new roof on the east side of the porch.”
Sarah looked at him, her gray eyes wide, wet, and filled with a question she didn't know how to ask.
“Why are you doing this, Marcus?” she whispered. “You didn't know us. You haven't seen Julian in twenty years.”
Marcus reached down, pulled the small blue plastic shoe out of his coat pocket, and set it on the tin beside the silver baby spoon.
“Because seven days ago,” Marcus said softly, looking at the little girl sitting on the bed, “a seven-year-old child pushed a rusty wheelbarrow three miles down a dirt road with two newborn babies and her dying mother because she believed there was a place where people helped moms who didn't have money yet.”
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He looked at Sarah, his jaw tight, his voice thick.
“And as long as my name is on the door of this hospital, she’s never going to be wrong about that.”
