He shifted his gaze, saw Kate, and froze. And Kate feared he would start screaming now. She smiled at him and said softly, “Hey, buddy.”
Maybe it was her voice, maybe it was just the way she reached down a hand, but tears came to his eyes, yet he didn’t scream. Instead he did something that completely shocked her. He reached up his arms to her.
Everybody in the room stiffened. But unable to stop the request of the child, she reached down and hugged him gently. When she tried to stand back, he locked his arms around her neck, so that, as she straightened, he came up with her. He just cuddled in close, and she held him.
“Oh my God,” his mother said, tears in her eyes. “He remembers you.”
Kate looked over at Rodney, who stared at her in surprise. She felt awkward holding the child; she had zero experience with children. But just something was so needy about this one, and that broke her heart. She held him close for a long moment and then whispered, “I think your mother needs a hug too.”
He looked up at Kate, looked over at his mother, who stood shaking, emotions racking her soul.
Kate walked around the bed, so he was closer to his mother, and he held out his arms, and his mother snatched him up, sat down in a chair with him in her arms, and just bawled. Kate looked at the empty bed, where the child had been, and looked at the mother and then back at Rodney, as if to say,Now what?
Rodney smiled at her—one of the truest smiles she’d ever seen on his face, at least directed at her—and he said, “That was a lovely thing to do.” She looked up at him in surprise. And he motioned to the mother, who desperately hung on to her son.
Thankfully it looked like the little boy was also hanging on to his mother.
Kate sighed softly. “We’ll come back another time,” she said to the mother, but Kate was pretty-damn sure the mother hadn’t even heard her. As Kate and Rodney stepped out of the doorway, realizing absolutely no answers were to be found here, she noted the father still sobbed at the bench. She reached down a hand, and he looked up startled.
She said, “You might want to go in and see your wife.” He bolted to his feet and walked in. She turned in time to see the look on his face, when he saw his son holding on to his wife. And he jumped forward and snatched both of them into his arms.
Kate turned and walked away, once again shoving her hands in her pockets, as if that would lighten the blow of all those emotions running amok inside her. As she walked toward the elevators, Rodney said, “You dealt with her really well.”
“Depending on what you mean bydealt with,” she said. “It’s not like we got any answers.”
“What answers were you looking for?”
“Ones I’ve got actually, the little boy has the same mark,” she said thoughtfully having seen the little boy’s arms. She hit the button on the elevator panel that led to the morgue. Rodney stepped up beside her.
“Are we are going to see the coroner?”
She nodded. “Unless you’ve got something to do?”
“No, I’m totally okay to tag along.”
“Well, if you get any leads,” she said, “I’ll be happy to tag along with you too.”
He grinned at her. “This seems to be your show.”
“Not my show,” she said quietly. “I just feel I don’t have any choice in the matter.”
“That’s how we all feel,” he said. “You are not alone in this.”
“Maybe,” she said, “but sometimes it feels like it.”
“And we get that,” he said, “but that stage is over.”
“Hope so.” She didn’t say anymore. At the basement, she checked in the coroner’s office, but it was empty. As she walked past another office, she saw two people inside, talking. She stopped and asked, “Dr. Smidge?”
One of them just pointed her farther down the hall and turned back to their chattering. Following the direction given, she reached the autopsy room. As she pushed open the door, a buzzer went off inside the room, a warning for those working.
Smidge’s voice rapped out, “No visitors.”
She popped her face around the corner and said, “Unless you are working on my cases.”
He looked up, frowned, and then nodded. “You can come in,” he said, “but gown up.”
She nodded, headed off to the side, pulled on a gown off a hook on the wall, scrubbed down, and snapped on gloves. As she joined the coroner, he had the little girl stretched out on the table, a sheet up to her collarbones. The doc worked on her head. Something was so devastating again about that tiny little body. So fragile and so broken. She felt Rodney’s disquiet at her side. “She looks ethereal, like a fairy tale princess.”