Chapter 2 - The Part Nobody Sings
For an instant, all four adults seemed to wait for someone else to speak.
Celia placed the sweater on a chair. “She's confused, the poor thing.”
Claire resisted the urge to turn around. The child was finally looking at another human face. Claire wasn't going to break that thread by demanding an explanation.
“I'm sorry,” Claire told Lily. “I won't finish the song.”
Lily looked down again. Her lips moved soundlessly, counting against the beat of the monitor.
Gabriel approached the foot of the bed. “What car, sweetheart?”
The little girl's hand clamped shut.
“Lily?”
Claire heard the impatience that had slipped into his voice. Not cruelty. Panic wearing a harder coat.
“Can we stop asking?” she said.
He swung toward her. “She said something about the attack.”
“And now she's frightened.”
Celia smoothed the pink sweater three times. “A new person can encourage fantasies. Children sometimes copy what they hear.”
“Then let's not put words in her mouth,” Claire answered.
Dr. Price entered, took one look at Lily's breathing, and asked everyone except Sandra and Claire to step outside. Even Gabriel went, though he took several seconds to obey.
Sandra checked Lily's pulse, speaking quietly about the tape on her wrist. Lily let her touch the IV once Claire showed how Noodle could wear a pretend bandage too. Price measured her blood pressure and checked the latest results. He announced a decision rather than offering another choice.
“She's going to the children's hospital,” he said when Gabriel returned. “Today. She needs a pediatric team and safe feeding support. We're beyond what we should be doing here.”
Gabriel's expression closed. “I have enemies who know where the hospitals are.”
“You also have a daughter who needs hospital care,” Price said. “We'll coordinate privacy and security. But we cannot turn your apartment into an ICU because you're afraid of the street.”
Claire thought the doctor might be fired on the spot. Instead Gabriel sat heavily in a chair by the window.
“Make the arrangements.”
Celia spoke immediately. “I'll pack Lily's things. The little blue bag, the one with the moon patch.”
Price blinked. “We haven't decided which ward or when transport is arriving.”
“She's always used that bag.” Celia reached for the dresser.
“Leave it for now,” Gabriel said.
Something in his tone stopped her. Claire saw Celia catch her own wrist, a tiny movement, before folding her hands.
The rest of the afternoon was all ordinary tasks made strange by fear. Sandra labeled medicines and called the receiving team. An ambulance crew arrived through the service entrance. Gabriel argued about visitors. Claire brought Lily's shoes and discovered that the left one was full of paper scraps, carefully folded into tiny triangles.
“I didn't look inside them,” Claire said, putting the scraps back.
For the first time Lily tracked Claire's hands all the way from shoe to pillow.
At the ambulance doors the girl began to shake. She saw the stretcher restraints and made a high, breathless sound. Claire crouched so Lily could see her face without looking down.
“They're straps to keep you from falling,” she said. “You can ask the nurse what each one does.”
Lily stared at the straps.
Sandra asked permission before touching her. The child let one belt cross her waist, then reached for Noodle with her free hand. Claire was almost absurdly relieved.
Gabriel followed close behind. When the doors shut, his daughter began to cry without tears.
“Dad,” she whispered. “Don't go in the front.”
Gabriel stopped moving.
He had been reaching for the front passenger door.
Claire didn't tell him the remark meant anything about the shooting. It might simply mean Lily needed to see him. Sandra shifted a seat so he could ride in the patient compartment instead.
At the hospital, the clinical team took over. Lily was admitted to a monitored pediatric room with a nurse stationed nearby. A child life specialist, Mateo, brought paper stars and gave Lily control over which one hung on the door. A child trauma psychologist, Dr. Aisha Patel, arrived after reviewing the first day's chart.
Patel had short, tightly curled hair and wore sneakers with tiny yellow suns on them. She introduced herself to Lily without asking the child to shake hands.
“I'm Aisha,” she said. “My job is to help people make hard things less hard. Sometimes we talk. Sometimes we draw. Sometimes we sit around thinking about lunch.”
Lily watched the suns on the shoes.
“Those shoes squeak?” she asked, so softly that Claire almost missed it.
“Sometimes. Not on purpose.” Patel shifted one foot. It made a faint chirp. Lily didn't smile, but she leaned toward the sound.
Patel met Gabriel's eyes. “There are also people here who can help if Lily has a nightmare. And there will be a plan for going home. It won't depend on whether she behaves perfectly today.”
Gabriel asked how long the child would need to stay. Patel said she could not give an honest estimate after one visit. He seemed to think honesty should be more helpful than that.
By the next morning the doctors had adjusted the fluids and ordered repeat bloodwork. The nurse explained each step in child-sized language, putting a sticker on the outside of the dressing afterward. Lily chose a star that had one point bent over. She wouldn't let Sandra straighten it.
Claire overheard Gabriel in a phone call saying, “Get the cars off that street. The fewer people who know, the better.” He noticed her listening and ended the call.
“You heard something?” he asked.
“You're not subtle in a hospital where everybody uses quiet voices.”
“It's my security team.”
“I figured.”
He looked uncomfortable. “I don't know how to be a father when I can't tell who's safe.”
Claire thought about the guards at the penthouse, the men outside the hospital door, and the toys still in their shopping bag. “Try asking the people who actually treat your daughter,” she said. “Then do what they tell you, even when it feels like not doing enough.”
He didn't thank her. But when Patel walked into the room, he moved his phone into his pocket.
“She doesn't need someone to make her tell the story,” Patel told Gabriel. “She needs to know she can stop people from asking.”
Gabriel pointed at Claire. “She got her speaking.”
“Then perhaps she can help show Lily that speaking doesn't make dangerous things happen.”
Claire stayed. She didn't leave for the night until a hospital social worker assured Gabriel that a familiar overnight nurse would remain on shift.
On the sidewalk she called Margaret. Her mother sounded winded but awake.
“Did the girl eat?”
“No.”
“Did she want you there?”
“I think so.”
“Then go back tomorrow.”
Claire waited for her mother to ask about the money. Margaret didn't. It made Claire feel ashamed of having counted it so often.
The next morning Claire returned with clean clothes and a bagel she ate in the corridor. Lily was drawing two rectangles in blue crayon. She added a black rectangle between them and pressed so hard the point snapped.
“Looks like doors,” Claire said.
Lily's hand stopped.
“I'm not asking you to explain,” Claire added.
The little girl pointed to one rectangle. “That's Mommy's.”
May you like
Then she pointed to the other.
“That's the door Miss Celia said we had to use.”
