Chapter 3 - The Cold and the Warmth
The waiting room of Seattle Grace Hospital smelled of floor wax, industrial bleach, and stale vending-machine coffee.
It was past midnight. Outside, the rain had finally slowed to a steady, rhythmic drizzle that smeared the city lights into long streaks of amber and neon across the massive plate-glass windows of the third-floor family lounge.
Lily was curled up like a small, sleeping kitten across a vinyl sofa that was far too large for her. She was wearing a pair of oversized gray sweatpants and a hospital-issued fleece blanket rolled up around her shoulders like a cocoon. Her plastic bag of eleven dollars and thirty-seven cents sat on the small laminate side table next to a half-empty cup of apple juice and a crumpled paper napkin.
Ethan sat on the edge of the adjoining chair, his elbows resting on his knees, his face buried in his hands.
His phone had buzzed thirteen times in the last hour—emails from suppliers in Milan, text messages from his regional vice president about the delayed autumn shipment, and a missed call from his own legal counsel regarding the quarterly tax filings. He hadn't answered a single one. For the first time in fourteen years of running Carter & Cole, the machinery of commerce had stopped existing for Ethan Vance.
A soft click of the heavy fire door announced the arrival of Dr. Evelyn Vance—no relation, though Ethan had often joked about the coincidence over the years. She was a tired-looking emergency physician in her late forties with silver-streaked hair pulled back into a messy clip and dark circles under her intelligent green eyes.
Ethan stood up immediately, stepping away from the sofa so as not to wake Lily.
"Evelyn?" Ethan asked, his voice rough from hours of silence.
Dr. Vance walked over to him, stripping off a pair of blue nitrile gloves and dropping them into a nearby waste receptacle. She let out a long, slow breath, rubbing the bridge of her nose where her glasses had left a deep red indentation.
"You brought her in just in time, Ethan," Dr. Vance said, her voice quiet and steady. "Thirty minutes later, and we wouldn't have been having this conversation."
Ethan felt a cold shudder run down his spine. "What happened?"
"Severe diabetic ketoacidosis complicated by a virulent kidney infection," Dr. Vance explained, leaning her hip against the side table. "Her name is Clara Carter. Thirty-one years old. Single mother, working freelance graphic design from home according to her emergency contacts and ID. She’d been fighting a low-grade fever for three days, trying to push through it to finish a client project, and her blood sugar crashed into a coma sometime yesterday afternoon. Her body simply shut down to preserve core functions."
"Is she going to make it?"
"She's conscious now," Dr. Vance said, a faint, tired smile touching the corners of her mouth. "She’s in the ICU under heavy monitoring, but her vitals are stabilizing. The IV insulin and broad-spectrum antibiotics are doing their job. She’s asking for her daughter."
Ethan let out a breath he felt like he’d been holding since he first saw that yellow raincoat on the security monitor twelve hours ago. He closed his eyes for a second, feeling the immense, crushing weight in his chest lift just enough to let him breathe.
"Can she see her?" Ethan asked, looking over his shoulder at the sleeping child on the sofa.
"Not quite yet. We want to keep her stabilized for another few hours before we introduce visitors, even family. But she's stable, Ethan. Out of the woods." Dr. Vance crossed her arms, studying him with a sharp, discerning gaze that had seen through a thousand lies and excuses in the ER. "You know, Brent called me from the store to fill me in on how you found her. Walking into a luxury boutique with eleven dollars and thirty-seven cents to buy a father? That's the kind of thing that sounds like a movie script, Ethan. Not real life."
"It was real enough," Ethan murmured, walking over to the window and looking out at the wet Seattle streets below. The rain had cleared away the smog, leaving the city looking washed, sharp, and brutally clear.
"What are you going to do with her, Ethan?" Dr. Vance asked gently. "Child Protective Services has been notified, of course—standard protocol for an unattended minor in a medical emergency. A social worker is coming by at eight in the morning to interview Clara once she's fully coherent, and to place Lily in temporary foster care until the mother is discharged."
Ethan stiffened. The word foster care hit him like a physical blow. He thought of that tiny yellow raincoat, the mismatched boots, the solemn dark eyes counting out pennies on a marble counter to buy someone who would stay.
"No," Ethan said, turning back around, his voice dropping into a hard, unyielding register.
Dr. Vance raised an eyebrow. "Ethan, that’s not your call to make. It’s the state’s."
"Then the state is going to have a very long conversation with my legal team tomorrow morning," Ethan said, his jaw tightening. "Lily isn't going into a temporary holding home. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not ever if I have anything to say about it."
Dr. Vance stared at him for a long, silent moment. A slow, knowing smile touched her lips. "You haven't looked at a quarterly profit sheet in fourteen hours, have you, Ethan?"
May you like
Ethan looked down at his wrinkled shirt, his rolled-up sleeves, and his mud-stained shoes. He felt lighter than he had in a decade.
"I don't care if I ever look at another spreadsheet as long as I live," Ethan said quietly.
