Part 4
Steam rose around Daniel’s wrist. He stepped away from the sink without noticing it.
“I’m coming,” he said, and put down the phone.
Nora had stopped coloring. She held a purple crayon in one hand, studying him.
“The judge had an accident,” he told her.
“I know something’s wrong.”
He went to the hook by the door for the keys to Alma’s sedan. She had lent it to him while he looked for work; now he could barely separate its key from the others.
Nora put the crayon down carefully.
“We have to help her again.”
Daniel knelt to fasten her coat. The button slipped twice.
“If she’s badly hurt…” He stopped.
The thirty-day order came back to him in the judge’s measured voice. He hated that it did. He also saw Evelyn laughing as a duck inspected her shoe, and the hand she had raised when Nora ran toward him in court.
Nora rested her fingers on his wrist.
“She got scared just when she was beginning to feel better. We can’t leave her there.”
He finished the button.
In the car, Nora watched the darkening streets. Daniel drove with both hands fixed on the wheel and prayed without forming complete sentences. At a red light, he looked at his daughter’s reflection in the side window.
She was five. Her feet didn’t reach the floor. He wanted, fiercely, for someone else to know what to do.
At the county hospital, the waiting area had filled with people from the courthouse and town. Damp coats hung over chair backs. A vending machine hummed beside a wastebasket full of paper cups.
Alma rose when they entered and drew Nora against her skirt.
“Any word?” Daniel asked.
“Not yet.”
He sat with Nora beside him and held her hand until she quietly moved his fingers.
“Too tight, Daddy.”
“I’m sorry.”
He loosened his grip but didn’t let go.
When Walter Bennett came through the doors, several people stood at once. He asked for a little room, then drew Daniel and Alma closer to the quieter end of the corridor.
“I’m working with the trauma team,” he said. “She’s had a serious head injury. The scans show swelling, and she’s been unconscious for about two hours.”
Daniel’s eyes moved toward the doors behind him.
“What happens now?”
“We monitor her closely and treat the swelling. The next day is important. I can’t give you an outcome tonight.”
Alma pressed both hands around the handle of her purse.
“But she could wake up?”
“Yes. She could.”
Nora stepped away from Alma.
“I need to see her.”
Walter looked down. Recognition passed across his face.
“Nora, she’s in intensive care. We’re limiting visitors, especially young children.”
“I won’t be noisy.”
“That isn’t the concern.”
Daniel touched her shoulder. “We should let them take care of her.”
“They can,” Nora said, looking up at him. “I’m not stopping them.”
She faced the doctor again.
“Before, she was hiding inside. Now she can’t find her way back. I said I’d help her.”
Walter rubbed a hand over his jaw. The fatigue in his face made him look older than he had in court photographs or at hospital fundraisers.
“I understand that you want to. But I can’t simply—”
“Walter.”
Marcus Ibarra stood near the vending machine, his tie pulled loose. Daniel hadn’t noticed him come in.
The prosecutor approached, then hesitated a few feet from Nora.
“I owe you an apology,” he told her.
Daniel looked between them.
Marcus put his hands in his pockets, took them out again, and finally left them at his sides.
“I’ve spent four days thinking about that hearing. I still think the order was wrong.” He looked at Daniel when he said it. “But I thought everything this child said was nonsense. I didn’t even listen.”
Nora waited.
“I’ve worked around Evelyn for ten years,” he continued. “I’ve never seen her reach for anything she couldn’t prove on paper. Something happened in that room. I don’t know what.”
He turned toward Walter.
“Could you make an exception? Supervised. Her father with her.”
“She may not be able to register that anyone is there.”
“I’ll be there,” Nora said.
From a chair near the corridor, an elderly woman spoke up.
“Let the little girl sit with her, Doctor. Surely she can have that much company.”
Walter looked toward the unit doors. For a moment, Daniel thought he would refuse again.
Then he checked his watch.
“Five minutes. You both wash your hands, and you follow every instruction the nurse gives you. Mr. Reeves stays beside her.”
Nora reached for Daniel before the doctor could change his mind.
The unit was quieter than Daniel expected. Shoes made soft sounds on the floor. Behind glass, a nurse adjusted a monitor while another read from a screen.
Evelyn lay with her head slightly raised. A dressing covered one side of her forehead. Clear tubing rested beneath her nose, and her hands lay open on the sheet.
Without the robe and the desk, she looked like someone who might have fallen asleep waiting for a visitor.
Daniel stopped just inside the room.
Walter helped position a chair beside the bed. Nora climbed onto it, kneeling so she could reach Evelyn without pulling at any lines.
“Hello, Your Judgeship,” she said.
The monitor continued its small, regular sounds.
Nora laid a hand along Evelyn’s forearm.
“We had a good time today. I don’t want you to forget that part.”
Walter remained near the foot of the bed. Daniel could see him watching the readings, then the child, then the readings again.
“When you fell, I think it felt like the car all over,” Nora continued. “But this is a different day. Daddy’s here. I’m here. You don’t have to do the scared part by yourself.”
She bent closer.
“If it’s too dark, we’ll make little lights. You can come toward those.”
Daniel put a hand against the doorframe.
“The first one is when you were little and learned to dance. You can wear the soft shoes. The next one is when you first became a judge and got to help somebody.”
Nora paused, her brow wrinkling with concentration.
“And there’s one for Captain Pickle trying to eat your shoe. That one’s funny. You can stop and laugh there if you need to.”
The monitor’s rhythm quickened.
Walter stepped closer to the screen.
“What is it?” Daniel whispered.
“A change in her heart rate.” He watched another reading. “Her pressure’s improving.”
Nora closed her other hand around Evelyn’s wrist.
“Keep coming. You know all these places. They belong to you.”
Evelyn’s forefinger moved against the sheet.
Daniel stared at it.
Walter leaned over the bed. “Evelyn? Can you hear me?”
Nora didn’t raise her voice.
“We’re waiting at the end. There’s more music here. You haven’t heard all of it.”
Evelyn’s eyelids tightened, then opened a fraction. Her gaze moved without settling, passing the ceiling and the doctor’s face.
Nora leaned into her line of sight.
“There you are.”
Evelyn’s lips parted.
“Nora?”
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