Chapter 6 - The Blood Nobody Could Promise
Nora wanted to call the police immediately. She was right, and I hated that she had to insist.
I handed the threatening photograph to the hospital security supervisor, who helped us make a report and preserve the message without replying. Our lawyer also received a copy. Nobody promised that a text message would produce an arrest by sunset. The detective assigned to Adrian's long-open missing-person file said he would compare it with earlier communications and request the records available through lawful process.
"I can have somebody find the sender," I told him.
"You can give me any information your security staff legitimately has," he answered. "Don't have anyone trespass into accounts or frighten a witness on your behalf."
His tone was polite. It was also an instruction I badly needed.
At the hospital, Dr. Pierce called Nora into a consultation room and invited me only after Nora agreed. A blood-bank specialist explained what the red band meant. The Bombay, or Oh, phenotype is rare because the person's red cells lack an antigen found in most people's blood. Standard blood types don't tell the whole compatibility story. Some relatives may share the phenotype; many won't. A laboratory had confirmed Emmy's type, and her records carried an alert so ordinary emergency blood would not be given without specialist review.
"Our first priority is treating the condition causing her anemia," Dr. Pierce said. "If we must transfuse, we have to make that decision with the transfusion service."
"Can you use mine?" I asked.
A specialist had already taken my sample through a properly ordered testing process. It was preliminary, but the type appeared to match Emmy's unusual phenotype. Further tests, donor screening, and compatibility procedures were still necessary. Directing my blood straight into her arm was neither safe nor available as a quick solution.
"A relative's blood isn't automatically safer," the specialist told me. "We have identified a frozen compatible unit through the regional rare-donor network. It's being released and transported under blood-bank procedures. That is the immediate plan if her doctors decide she needs it."
For once, I didn't argue with the plan simply because I wasn't the center of it.
Nora held Emmy's small sweater in her lap. "What can we do until then?"
"Be here. Help her feel secure. Ask us questions when you have them."
We returned to the room together. Emmy was awake but listless. Dana helped adjust her pillow while the monitor beeped in a pattern that had become the sound of my worst fear.
"I want my dad," Emmy said.
Nora pressed her lips together. "I know."
The words caught in my throat. I had been telling everyone for years that I wanted Adrian back. I had rarely asked what Adrian might want if we found him.
Michael arrived with an update from the independent attorney. Investigators had agreed to receive the ledger and electronic materials for review. The storage drive was not yet authenticated; it was potential evidence, not a verdict. My company records would need preserving, and Graham must not be allowed to make routine deletions without oversight.
"Call the corporate counsel," I said. Then I changed my mind. Our longtime counsel reported to Graham on daily matters. "No. Ask the independent attorney which preservation notice is appropriate, and copy our board's outside audit chair."
"That could suspend our biggest contracts," Michael warned.
"It might."
I thought of the hospital's refrigerated blood arriving through a verified chain, every step documented because a life might depend on the temperature being right. Adrian had tried to protect that kind of chain. I had called him reckless for it.
Dana caught my eye as she checked Emmy's pump. "She's asking for you," she said.
Emmy held Benny in one arm. With the other she motioned me closer and opened her palm. A little folded card lay in it, decorated with seven crooked stars.
"Mommy said I could give this to you if I got really sick," she whispered.
On the front, in Isabel's careful handwriting, was a single instruction: Ask your grandfather to read the back of the photograph, not just the front.
I unfolded the old harbor picture. In the hospital glare I'd missed pencil marks beneath the photographer's date stamp. I tilted the paper toward the light.
A street name in Rhode Island appeared, followed by an apartment number and a sentence written in Adrian's unmistakable hand:
I am not gone for the reason he thinks.
Beneath it was a date from eleven months ago.
May you like
It was not a picture that had remained untouched since Adrian disappeared.
Someone had written on it three years after he went missing.
