“Karen, what exactly did your mother ask you to do?”
Daniel looked toward the house.
“Call her.”
“I will.”My phone was already in my hand when another message appeared.
Karen: She told me to wait.
I called her.
She answered before the second ring.
“Hi.”
“Where are you supposed to wait?”
“The hospital parking garage.”
“Which level?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did Vivian give you a time?”
“No.”
“Did she tell you who you were waiting for?”
Karen hesitated.
Then she folded the parking receipt into a square.
“She told me to wait.”
Karen tucked the square of paper into her coat pocket and looked toward the hospital entrance.
“Did she tell you why she wanted you here?”
Karen shook her head. “No. She said she needed me close by.”
“Close by for what?”
She opened her mouth, then stopped when a hospital employee pushed through the garage door with a cart of folded blankets. Karen stepped aside. The employee nodded and kept going.
“She said we would talkafter the babies were born,” Karen said. “That was all.”
Daniel looked at me. “I’ll call her.”
I checked the time on my phone. “Not now.”
He frowned. “Why?”
“Because I want to hear what she says when she thinks she has time to prepare.”
Daniel slipped his phone back into his pocket, and Karen watched him do it. She looked younger than thirty six just then, standing beside a Buick with 190,000 miles on it, holding a parking receipt she had already folded into a neat square.
“I can stay,” Karen said. “If you want me to.”
“Go home if you want.”
She shook her head. “I think I should stay.”
The hospital doors opened again, and a nurse called for someone by the wrong first name. Karen smiled at the mistake, then looked back at us.
“Elena, if Mom asks me to do something strange, I’ll callyou.”
That was the first promise anyone had made me that day without attaching a condition to it.
By two o’clock, I was in the preadmission office with Daniel beside me, answering questions about medications, allergies, and emergency contacts. He carried the hospital bag in one hand and kept checking that the car seats were still in the Buick.
The clerk slid another form across the desk.
“Just this one.”
I signed where she pointed.
