When he arrived at the hospital, he came in the way he always did when he believed smoothing things over was still an option: clean shirt, controlled expression, the particular measured confidence of someone who had rarely faced consequences he could not talk his way around. He walked down the hallway toward my room and stopped when he saw who was waiting.
My sister. My mother. And a police officer with a small notebook standing at the end of the hall beside them.
His expression changed in stages that I could track even from my bed through the half-open door. First irritation, then confusion, then a rapid and visible calculation as he processed the uniform and adjusted his approach accordingly.
“What is this?” he asked.
Megan stepped forward. “This is what happens when you leave your eight-months-pregnant wife on the side of the road.”
