Chapter 3 - The Interrogation Room
The silence on the other end of the phone line stretched out for three agonizing seconds before my mother’s voice cut back through the speaker, no longer sweet, but sharp, shrill, and dripping with righteous indignation.
“Ethan Thomas Miller, have you lost your absolute mind?!” Linda shrieked through the phone, the sound echoing slightly in the quiet hospital corridor. “How dare you speak to your own mother like that after everything Ashley and I have sacrificed this week to help you out! We put our lives on hold to come stay in this drafty house, running after a crying infant day and night while your lazy wife stayed in bed playing the invalid!”
Sergeant Miller shot me a sharp look, raising his hand to gesture that I should keep her talking.
“You didn't do a damn thing, Mom,” I choked out, my voice trembling as the sheer audacity of her lies hit me like a physical blow. “I walked into that bedroom before sunrise today. Emily was gray, unresponsive, and non-responsive with a raging infection. Noah was burning up, starving, and wrapped in a dirty blanket. The doctors say they were hours away from dying. And you were sleeping.”
“Oh, dramatic nonsense!” Ashley’s voice suddenly chimed in from the background, clearly leaning in close to the receiver. My sister sounded less panicked and more profoundly annoyed, as if we were inconveniencing her morning schedule. “Emily was just being dramatic, Ethan! Every new mother thinks she’s dying the second she gets a little tired. We checked on her yesterday afternoon, didn't we, Mom? She didn't want to eat, she didn't want to get out of bed, and the baby wouldn't stop screaming no matter what we did. It’s not our fault she’s a bad mother!”
The rage inside my chest crystallized into something cold, sharp, and absolute.
“The police are on their way to the house right now,” I said, my voice dropping to a terrifyingly quiet whisper. “The doctors have already filed a federal report for infant endangerment and severe medical neglect. You stay right where you are. Don't touch anything. Don't leave. Because the next people walking through that front door won't be bringing you coffee.”
I slammed my thumb against the screen, cutting the call off mid-rant.
Sergeant Miller exhaled a long breath through his nose, slipping his notepad back into his tactical belt. “Well, that saves us the trouble of trying to establish reasonable doubt. That tone right there is textbook sociopathic deflection. My patrol unit should be arriving at your property within the next three minutes.”
“Can I go back to see my son?” I asked, my voice cracking as I looked past the sergeant toward the heavy double doors of the neonatal unit.
“Go,” the sergeant nodded sympathetically, stepping aside. “Just stay within the hospital grounds. We’ll need your formal statement at the precinct once my officers secure your mother and sister.”
I didn't wait. I turned on my heel and practically ran down the corridor toward the NICU entrance, scrubbing my palms against my jeans to wipe away the cold sweat.
The neonatal intensive care unit was a stark contrast to the chaotic emergency ward. It was quiet, bathed in soft blue lighting, and filled with the steady, rhythmic hissing of oxygen monitors and incubators. A nurse led me down a narrow aisle of glass-walled bassinets until she stopped in front of a small, self-contained incubator in the corner.
There he was.
Noah. My tiny boy.
He looked impossibly small beneath a web of fine clear tubing taped to his tiny hands and chest. A small pulse oximeter glowed a steady red around his fragile heel. His skin, which should have been soft and rosy, had a pale, bruised pallor to it, though the dangerous flush of the fever had finally begun to recede under the cooling blankets.
I pressed my palms against the clear plastic wall of the incubator, my breath fogging the surface.
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“I’m sorry, buddy,” I whispered, tears finally breaking free and spilling over my cheeks. “Daddy’s here. I’ve got you. Nobody is ever going to hurt you again.”
As if he could hear my voice through the glass, one tiny, bruised hand twitched against the blanket, his little fingers curling instinctively into the air.
