Chapter 5 - The Proxy
Daniel had a signed medical proxy.
Nora had signed it fourteen months earlier during a routine estate-planning meeting.
She remembered the conference room. The stale cookies. Daniel joking that nobody read legal forms except lawyers and criminals.
She had laughed and signed.
Now Dr. Hsu was asking whether Nora wanted the proxy revoked before surgery.
"Yes."
"We need a witness."
"Use everyone in this room. Use the janitor."
A nurse almost smiled.
The emergency C-section began twelve minutes later.
Nora was awake behind a blue drape when the room changed tone.
Faster voices.
More hands.
Then silence.
"Why isn't she crying?" Nora asked.
No one answered immediately.
"Why isn't my baby crying?"
A tiny sound came from across the room.
A squeak more than a cry.
Nora broke.
"Is she alive?"
Dr. Hsu leaned over the drape.
"She's alive. She's small, and she needs help breathing, but she's alive."
Nora laughed and sobbed at the same time.
"Girl?"
"A girl."
"Sophie."
She had never chosen that name with Daniel.
That mattered to her.
Sophie Bennett was taken to NICU.
Two hours later, Nora woke in recovery to find Detective Rourke beside the bed.
"Your daughter is stable," Rourke said.
Nora nodded.
"And Daniel?"
"Released pending further investigation."
Nora sat up too quickly.
Pain flashed white across her abdomen.
"Released?"
"The audio is strong evidence, but his attorney is arguing your mother's—"
"His mother."
"Right. His mother's words are ambiguous, and he claims the impact was an attempt to stop your car."
"He accelerated."
"We're checking vehicle data."
Nora hated how careful the detective sounded.
Careful felt like useless.
Rourke continued, "There is something else. The fire department tried to reach your car at the bottom."
Nora's throat tightened.
"The red case?"
"Gone."
"Daniel took it?"
"We don't know."
Rourke put a photograph on the table.
It showed the wrecked white sedan wedged against rocks fifty feet below the shelf where it had first stopped.
The trunk had been forced open.
Not from the crash.
From a pry bar.
May you like
Someone had reached the car before rescuers did.
