Chapter 2 - ST. JUDE’S
The ambulance arrived in nine minutes.
To Lucy, it felt like judgment.
To Daniel, it felt like too long.
Paramedics moved quickly through the apartment while the two boys cried and Lucy stood against the wall clutching the empty grocery bag.
Daniel gave the medics what he knew.
Female.
Mid-thirties.
Unresponsive.
Possible infection.
Possible dehydration.
Children in apartment.
No phone.
No food.
No heat.
When they lifted Rebecca Carter onto the stretcher, Lucy broke.
“Please don’t take her away,” she cried. “I was going to get the milk. I fixed it. I brought food.”
Daniel knelt in front of her.
“You did not cause this.”
Her face twisted.
“I should’ve gone yesterday.”
“No,” he said. “Adults should have known yesterday.”
She looked at him like that was a language she had never been taught.
The boys were named Eli and Jonah.
Eli was four and tried to be brave by holding Jonah’s hand too tightly.
Jonah was two and kept whispering, “Milk, milk, milk,” until Clara, one of the paramedics, opened a carton from the groceries and poured a little into a paper cup.
Daniel followed the ambulance to St. Jude’s Medical Center.
He called his garage manager, Luis, on the way.
“Open without me.”
“You okay, boss?”
“No.”
That was all he had.
At the hospital, Rebecca disappeared behind double doors.
The children were checked in.
Social work was called.
So was child protective services.
Lucy heard those words and went rigid.
“They’re going to split us up,” she said.
Daniel sat beside her in the waiting area.
“I won’t let anyone forget you belong together.”
“You can’t promise that.”
She was right.
The truth hurt.
“I can promise I’ll stay until someone with the right authority listens.”
Lucy watched him closely.
Children who have been disappointed by adults do not trust promises.
They test the shape of them.
“Why?” she asked.
Daniel looked toward the emergency doors.
“Because I think your mom is my sister.”
Lucy blinked.
“My mom doesn’t have a brother.”
“She did.”
“No,” Lucy said sharply. “She said her brother died.”
Daniel’s chest tightened.
“Who told her that?”
Lucy looked down.
“Aunt Lorraine.”
The name struck harder than the photograph.
Lorraine Carter.
His mother’s cousin.
The woman who had taken Rebecca after the fire.
The woman who told the caseworker Daniel was unstable.
The woman who told Daniel, at ten years old, that little Rebecca had been adopted by a family who did not want him to contact her.
Daniel had believed her because children believe adults who hold folders.
He had searched when he turned eighteen.
Records lost.
Names changed.
Addresses gone cold.
After ten years, he stopped calling it searching and started calling it grief.
“What does Aunt Lorraine look like?” he asked.
Lucy frowned.
“Old. Red hair. She smells like cigarettes and church perfume.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
Same woman.
Older now.
Still alive.
Still standing between him and the truth.
A doctor came out after an hour.
Rebecca had severe pneumonia, dehydration, and complications from an untreated infection.
She was critical but stable.
Not awake.
Not safe yet.
But alive.
Daniel asked if he could see her.
The doctor looked at him.
“Are you family?”
Daniel looked at Lucy.
Then at the closed ICU doors.
“I think so,” he said.
The doctor did not know what to do with that.
Social worker first.
Documents later.
That was how systems worked.
Daniel understood systems.
He also knew systems often moved too slowly for children.
He called the only attorney he trusted.
Elaine Mercer.
No relation, despite the name.
She had handled his adoption record search fifteen years earlier and told him the file looked “too clean in all the wrong places.”
She answered on the third ring.
“Daniel?”
“I found Rebecca.”
Silence.
Then all the sleep left her voice.
“Where?”
“St. Jude’s. Chicago. She has three kids. They were starving.”
Elaine swore softly.
Daniel had never heard her swear before.
That scared him.
“I’m coming,” she said. “Do not sign anything without me. Do not argue with CPS. Be calm, be useful, and start writing down names.”
Daniel took out the small notebook he kept for repair orders.
Names.
Times.
Witnesses.
Market.
Apartment.
Photo.
Aunt Lorraine.
When he looked up, Lucy was watching him.
“You’re not leaving?”
“No.”
She nodded once, but her chin trembled.
Then she whispered, “If you’re really Mom’s brother, why didn’t you come before?”
Daniel had no answer that would not break them both.
May you like
So he gave her the only honest thing he had.
“Because someone lied to both of us.”
