The Good Father

BRETT HAD TO be in Chicago for an eleven o’clock meeting Wednesday morning. He’d be spending the few hours he had in his first-class airline seat studying the agenda for Music Muscles, a nonprofit music-therapy organization that was one of his newest clients. One that, so far, gave him no cause for concern. From there he’d head to Detroit, where he was spending the night before an early Thursday-morning meeting, and then it was off to Washington, DC, that afternoon.

Leaving his black BMW in secured parking, he pulled the carry-on out of the trunk, slung his leather garment bag over one shoulder, his matching briefcase satchel over the other and strode straight to the preferred security line in the terminal at LAX.

After he’d checked in, with limited time before they’d be calling him to preboard, Brett reached beneath his suit coat to the holster secured to his leather belt and pulled out his cell phone.

Her number had been on the High Risk team email he’d received the morning before. He’d typed it into contacts only so that her name would come up if she phoned, and he could avoid answering.

He found the name. Hit call. And then waited. Airline staff had opened the Jetway door. He only had a minute or two.

One ring. Two. And then three. He glanced at his watch. It was before seven in the morning. Her shift at the hospital didn’t start until eight, and her apartment was a twenty-minute drive away. He was, after all, the king of online investigating. He’d sold the dot-com. Not his abilities.

He still sat on the board of the company he founded—with his percentage of the take being donated to The Lemonade Stand every month.

On the sixth ring a flight employee announced that it was time for him to board. And he was sent to voice mail.

Brett didn’t leave a message.

* * *

ELLA GOT A new patient on Wednesday. A three-pound, nine-week-old girl who came to them from the Santa Raquel hospital with a peripherally inserted central catheter and a ventilator. The tiny thing was only now at thirty-four weeks gestational age. But if all went well, she’d be running and playing with her siblings soon enough, with no memory of how rough her life had been at the start. She was a lucky one. Her heart was good. Her lungs appeared to be developing normally. And as soon as her organs were mature enough to function on their own, she could hopefully go home.

In the meantime, she’d need a diaper change every three hours, a daily assessment and very careful monitoring.

Ella felt as if she needed monitoring that day, too. She must have checked her voice mail half a dozen times. And looked for text messages twice as often. Maybe she should have picked up Brett’s call. But if she was going to do this, she had to be the one in charge.

But she’d wanted him to leave a message so she’d know how much of a problem he was going to be.

She hadn’t thought for a second that he’d be glad to hear from her—or to know that she’d invaded his home territory. Maybe she’d even taken a tiny bit of pleasure in having done so—in having a legitimate reason to rock his boat.

A reason he wouldn’t be able to refuse.

Because one of the things she was certain of in her life was that she knew Brett Ackerman. He wouldn’t turn his back on a friend in need if he felt he could help. Ever.

And most particularly, he wouldn’t turn his back on Jeff.

Jeff, Ella’s brother, had been Brett’s college roommate. They’d met in their freshman year. Right after Brett’s little sister had died. And his mother had had a breakdown resulting from the loss and from having withstood years of domestic violence at the hands of Brett’s father. She’d lashed out at Brett. And then put herself in self-imposed isolation for having done so. Leaving Brett alone to cope.

Alone except for Jeff. Who’d been a solid rock in Brett’s life, refusing to let him suffer in solitude. Brett had credited Jeff with saving his life.

Now it was time for Brett to save theirs.

* * *

ELLA WAITED ALL DAY Wednesday for him to call back. To leave a message. Clearly he’d heard that she was there. He had her new cell phone number. And Brett was definitely one who faced his battles head-on.

There’d been a time when she’d admired that about him.

She wanted to be the one to initiate their first conversation. But a hint as to his mind-set first would be good. Was he angry? Curious? Was it possible he’d actually missed her?

She would give him until her last break on Thursday before calling him. She didn’t want to speak to him for the first time in four years in front of Chloe. While she knew she was over Brett, she wasn’t positive that there wasn’t any residual pain lurking inside her. Chloe didn’t need more guilt added to her already overflowing plate.

At five minutes after two on Thursday afternoon, just as she was leaving the floor, she got a page. She was needed on Pod B stat. A baby had just been admitted. He was nine months old, had spent the first four months of his life at a NICU in LA, and was being readmitted due to an infection around the area of his G-tube.

“I wanted you to see this,” Dr. Claire Worthington said as soon as Ella approached the crib where the baby lay completely still. She saw the finger-shaped marks on the little guy’s thighs immediately.

“These look too big to be female,” Ella said. It was the first thought that sprang to mind.

“His grandmother brought him in. Said his mother’s under the weather.”

“His paternal grandmother?” Ella asked, assisting a nurse from the PICU as she taped a newly placed line.

The baby was more than five pounds underweight. “According to his medical records he’s lost four pounds since his check two weeks ago,” Dr. Worthington said. “The grandmother claims that the mother refused to let anyone use his G-tube. He was being bottle and spoon fed through his mouth.” The area around the feeding tube looked as though it hadn’t been touched in a couple days, at least. Which could easily have caused the infection.

“Has social services been called?” If not, they’d be the first call on Ella’s list when the doctor finished giving her orders and the little guy was settled.

“Not yet,” Dr. Worthington said, a grim look on her face. “I’ll be filling out a suspected abuse report and know that you’re the go-to person.”

“You suspect the mother?” But the bruises on the baby’s thigh...

“I think if Mom had done this, she’d be here, claiming that something was physically wrong with him. She’d be defending herself. It doesn’t fit that she’d let Grandma bring him in. Grandma didn’t stay—she just dropped him off and said she had to get back. She appeared nervous. Besides, these bruises, while clearly thumb-shaped, are too big.”

“I’ll give my High Risk Team contacts a call and get someone out to the house ASAP,” Ella said. She should have thought of it first, even before social services. For now, little Henry was in good hands. But his mother...

Filled with adrenaline, Ella forgot all about her break, about her ex-husband, and made her first call as a member of the Santa Raquel High Risk team.

She was needed.

And that was all that mattered.

* * *

BRETT WAS IN a hotel room in Washington late Thursday night, sitting at the desk with his laptop, going through the day’s email, when he saw the notice about Henry Burbank and his mother, Nora. He wasn’t a member of the High Risk team, but due to his relationship with The Lemonade Stand and his seat on the board, he received all emails pertaining to their work.

According to the police report from the day’s home visit, Nora showed no visible signs of bruising. The woman exhibited fear as she refused a physical examination. Her husband stood over her the entire time the officer was there and, though a female officer tried to coax her away, she refused to leave his side. The report stated that there were no signs of affection between the two, and Nora spent most of her time looking at the ground. The grandmother had alarming bruises on an arm that she claimed came from the banister when she started to slip going down the stairs. She also adamantly refused a physical examination.

There’d been one previous call to the police regarding the couple, from a neighbor claiming to have heard a loud male voice and something crashing, but when the officers had gone out, they hadn’t seen anything amiss, and all three adults in the home insisted that everything was fine. They’d all appeared to be in good health.

Mom, Dad and Grandma, all three, gave the exact same story regarding the bruises on baby Henry’s thighs. He’d moved suddenly while being changed, and his father had saved him from a fall off the changing table.

The mom, Nora, was being blamed by Dad and Grandma for the baby’s ill health, with claims that she’d force-fed him through his mouth, but the young mother had told police that she’d only ever used the G-tube to feed her son and had kept it cared for exactly as she’d been taught at the hospital. But when they’d asked how often the mother had fed her baby herself, as opposed to someone else feeding him, she’d clammed up.

Child Protective Services would be investigating further before the baby would be released back to his parents’ care.

They had nothing concrete at the moment to keep Ted Burbank away from his family. Which meant that the possibly abusive man had visitation rights at the hospital with his son, Henry.

Charge nurse Ella Ackerman, the ex–Mrs. Brett Ackerman, was on full alert.

Brett needed a drink.