“Nobody touches this until the paramedics get here.”
And there it was — the detail my brain had already flagged and filed, the way it used to flag a name that shouldn’t have been on a manifest.
Vanessa hadn’t filled that cup from the dispenser everyone else had used all afternoon.
She’d carried it in already full. From the kitchen. Where no one had been watching.
The paramedics lifted Lucy onto the stretcher four minutes later. Vanessa caught my arm before I could climb in after her.
“If you start accusing people, you could destroy this family.”
I pulled free.
She hadn’t asked if my daughter was going to live.
She’d asked what the truth might cost her.
PART 2
The pediatric ER smelled like antiseptic and burnt coffee, and I sat in a molded plastic chair memorizing every word the attending said, the way I used to debrief a source I didn’t fully trust.
