Chapter 12
“Is something wrong?”
I looked at Marcus.
He was staring at the phone as if it contained a message from another life.
“Emily said I told her she might need to help me tomorrow,” I said.
Dr. Patel’s expression shifted.
“Who told her that?”
“That’s what we’re trying to understand.”
Marcus looked toward the waiting area.
Then toward the elevators.
His voice was barely above a whisper.
“She said Mom told her.”
I felt a chill move through me.
My mother had been dead for six years.
PART 3 – The Secret Marcus Had Been Carrying Alone – 9!001
PART 3
I felt a chill move through me.
My mother had been dead for six years.
For a moment, none of us spoke.
The hospital corridor continued around us. A transport aide pushed an empty wheelchair toward the elevators. Someone laughed softly behind a closed door. A monitor beeped in a steady rhythm somewhere beyond the surgical wing.
Ordinary sounds.
But the world inside me had gone completely still.
Marcus lowered the phone.
“Emily didn’t say Mom called her,” he said. “She said Mom told her.”
“I heard you.”
“Maybe she meant you.”
“I’m her mother.”
His face tightened.
“She might have misunderstood.”
“She knows who I am.”
David glanced at Dr. Patel.
Dr. Patel looked toward the waiting area.
“Let’s not assume anything,” she said. “Children sometimes repeat conversations in ways that make sense to them.”
“She sounded confused,” Marcus said.
“She sounded worried,” I replied.
He looked at me.
I could see the question forming in his eyes, the same one I was trying not to ask myself.
Who had spoken to our daughter?
I took out my phone.
There were no missed calls. No messages. Nothing unusual.
“Call her back,” Marcus said.
“I don’t want to scare her.”
“Neither do I.”
“Then we need to sound normal.”
His expression softened with weary affection.
“You sound normal.”
“I’m holding a lunch bag full of a sandwich you didn’t eat while standing in a hospital corridor trying to understand how our dead mother gave instructions to our daughter. I do not sound normal.”
A faint smile touched his mouth.
It vanished almost immediately.
I called the house.
Emily answered on the second ring.
“Mom?”
“Hi, sweetheart. I’m here.”
“Is Dad still with you?”
“Yes.”
“Can I talk to him again?”
“Of course.”
I handed him the phone.
Marcus leaned against the wall, lowering his voice.