She stopped walking.
The girl clutched something in both hands.
A pair of yellow rubber gloves, old and creased.
She held them out toward the doctors like an offering.
Nobody took them.
“Excuse me,” the girl said.
Her voice cracked.
“My brother is sick.”
Dr. Harlan Greiss turned from the desk.
He was the chief of pediatrics. Silver hair, pressed white coat, a gold anchor pin on his lapel.
He looked at the girl the way a man looks at a stain.
“Who let this child in here?” he asked.
“Sir, she just walked in,” said the desk clerk, Imani Brooks. “She’s soaking wet.”
“This is a naval hospital, Ms. Brooks. We treat Navy families. We do not run a shelter.”
Greiss checked his watch.
“Call county services. Let them sort it out.”
“Her brother looks sick, Dr. Greiss.”
“Then the county can send an ambulance.”
He smiled at the other doctors.
“Some of us have actual patients.”
Laughter again.
Dr. Cody Brandt, the young resident with the phone, zoomed in on the girl’s face.
“Hey, kid,” he said. “Where’s your mom? Lost her at the mall?”
The girl’s chin trembled.
She said nothing.
Lauren felt something tighten behind her ribs, a feeling she had spent four years burying.
She set the coffee on the counter.
Her hand was steady.
She noticed that.
She pushed it back into a tremble.
Not yet.
Stay small.
She took one step, then another.
The girl turned and looked at her.
Gray eyes, huge and frightened.
They searched Lauren’s face the way a drowning child searches for a rope.
Then the girl lifted the yellow gloves a little higher.
Her thumb pressed against the left cuff.
Lauren saw it.
Three tiny black stitches.
Crooked, evenly spaced, sewn into the rubber lining with fishing line.
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