“Until we understand the circumstances, yes.”
Greg stepped forward. Tyler stepped forward too.
It was small. Almost polite.
But the room changed.
Greg noticed.
He looked at Tyler’s badge, then at the security officer, then at the glass wall where two nurses had slowed near the station.
My mother leaned over my bed again. Her perfume was powdery and expensive, almost sweet. It mixed with hospital bleach until my stomach rolled.
“You are confused from medication,” she said softly. “You don’t want to say things you can’t take back.”
My hand closed around the phone.
The IV tugged at my skin.
“I remember the click,” I said.
Her face hardened.
That was all.
Not a slap. Not a shout.
Just the mask setting back into place.
The door opened at 9:27 a.m.
The man who stepped in looked nothing like the villain I had built in my head.
Daniel Carter had gray at his temples, oil-dark half-moons under his fingernails, and a navy work jacket zipped over a plain white T-shirt. His eyes were red, not from crying exactly, but from holding himself so tightly that something had to leak out somewhere.
In his left hand, he carried a thick manila folder.
In his right, a battered envelope with my name written across it in block letters.
Mom stood so fast her purse slid off her shoulder.
“You can’t be here.”
Daniel did not look at her first.
He looked at me.
His face folded for half a second. Then he straightened it, like he knew I needed a steady person more than a broken one.
“Hey, kiddo,” he said.
No speech. No dramatic reach for my hand.
Just two words.
My chest pulled tight around the stitches.
Mom turned to Ms. Reed.
“He has no legal right to be near my son.”
Daniel opened the folder.
Paper slid against paper. Crisp, dry, official.
“Actually,” he said, “that’s what I came to clear up.”
Greg laughed once.
“Here we go.”
