Chapter 2 - The Hospital Whispers
The drive to Atlanta Memorial Hospital was a blur of traffic lights and windshield wipers. My clothes were damp, sticking to my skin like ice, but I couldn't feel the cold. I could only feel the overwhelming, suffocating presence of betrayal.
I found Marcus in the pediatric wing, standing outside Room 304. He looked exhausted, his broad shoulders slumped, a paper cup of coffee turning cold in his hands. He looked up as I approached, his dark eyes unreadable.
"She's physically unharmed, Arthur," Marcus said before I could even open my mouth. His voice was low, gravelly. "The doctors ran a full tox screen and checked her for injuries. Not a single scratch on her."
"The blood?" I asked, my voice cracking.
"O-positive. It belongs to the guy in your floorboards," Marcus replied, leaning against the sterile white wall. "I didn't call the cops, Artie. Not yet. Because the second I do, Emily goes into the system until they clear you, and Claire becomes the subject of a nationwide manhunt. I needed you to see the house first. I needed you to understand that your wife didn't just run away. She orchestrated this."
I pushed past him and opened the door to the hospital room.
Emily looked so incredibly tiny in the standard-issue hospital bed. She was bathed, her blonde hair damp and combed back, dressed in a fresh hospital gown. She was staring at the television mounted on the wall, but it wasn't turned on. Her eyes were blank, completely detached from reality.
"Em?" I whispered, pulling a plastic chair to the edge of her bed. I reached out and gently took her small, cold hand. "Daddy's here. I'm right here, sweetie."
She didn't blink. She didn't squeeze my hand back.
"Emily, please," I choked out, the tears finally spilling over. "Please look at me."
For a long, agonizing minute, the only sound was the soft hum of the heart monitor. Then, slowly, she turned her head. Her blue eyes, so much like her mother's, locked onto mine. But there was no warmth in them. Just an abyss of trauma.
"Mommy said you were dead," she whispered, her voice rasping as if she hadn't spoken in days.
"What?" I breathed, my blood turning to ice. "No, baby, I'm right here. I was away for work. I came back as fast as I could."
"Mommy said the man in the floor came to take you away," Emily continued, her voice devoid of inflection. "She gave him a lot of green paper. But then the man said it wasn't enough. He said he wanted me too."
I felt the air leave my lungs.
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"Mommy got mad," Emily whispered, finally squeezing my fingers. "She used the big knife from the block. The one you use for the turkey. She hurt him, Daddy. She hurt him a lot. And then she looked at me and said you wouldn't want me anymore. Then she packed her bag and drove away."
She didn't run from a killer. My wife was the killer. And she had left our daughter covered in a dead man's blood in the freezing rain.
