At Close Range

The boy needed security. Whatever was causing the sleepwalking, whatever was causing the bed-wetting, might never be known to them, but the symptoms could still be treated. The cure, Brian was certain, especially in one so young, was a stable, two-parent home environment. An environment like the Summerses had to offer Felicia.

An environment he could offer to Joseph and his mother.

“Have you seen the Sun News?” Hannah didn’t bother with a hello when Brian finally answered his phone at four forty-five the next afternoon. She’d just come off the bench to be handed a copy of the weekly paper by her judicial assistant. Brian’s picture took up half the front page. Hannah’s name was in the second paragraph.

“Hannah? No, I’ve had back-to-back patients since I got in this morning. To be honest, I’m not even sure what time it is. What’s up?”

Relieved that he hadn’t been broadsided, that she could break the news to him gently, Hannah silently reread parts of the article. Her protective instincts reared all over again.

“They’ve gone too far this time,” she said, pissed off and ready to take someone on. “It says here that you refused to comment.”

“Only by default. I had some bad news to deliver to the parents of a three-year-old. The reporter completely slipped my mind.”

Immediately taken back to her own experience as the parent of one of Brian’s patients, remembering the strength he’d given her when she didn’t have enough of her own, Hannah glanced away from the paper.

Kids were supposed to be free from worry, from stress and pain. Childhood was for naiveté and laughter. Playing. No responsibility.

Or so they said.

“Is the three-year-old going to be okay?”

“It doesn’t look good.”

Holding back the tears that would fall if she’d let them, tears that she’d grown adept at fighting over the past year, she looked again at the article while questions she couldn’t ask raged through her mind.

How long had the little girl been sick? What were her symptoms? How old were the parents? Were they a close family? Were there other kids? Did they have the resources for treatment? Was there any hope?

“So how bad is the article?” Brian’s question brought her out of a nightmare and into a mess.

“Bad,” she told him, because that’s how they were. Always honest. Always there for each other. Loving but never lovers. “Someone’s done a lot of talking out of turn followed up by incompetent research.”

“Okay.” His tone told her to get on with it.

“They say that there’ve been an unusual number of SIDS deaths in the valley over the past year….”

“That’s not true. Our educational seminars have had an impact already. The statistics are changing.”

“Yeah, they mention that.” Hannah’s voice dropped. Since shortly after her son’s death, she and Brian, a mother and a doctor, had been traveling around the state speaking to groups of expectant parents, offering two different perspectives but delivering the same message. There were ways to lessen the chances of SIDS. Easy ways. “Which is why it’s a concern to this reporter that there’s one doctor who’s seen an upswing in sudden infant deaths among his patients.”

“Me.”

“Right.”

His silence was difficult to take.

“He doesn’t name his source but he claims that he’s gone through public records to verify his facts.”

“Which are?”

“You have three-hundred percent more cases of SIDS than any other doctor in the city.”

Again, he said nothing.

“Is that true?”

“If every other doctor in the city averages one death a year, yes.”

“You’ve had four.”

“And you knew about all four of them.”

Yeah. She had. She just hadn’t realized…

“He says that all four of your patients were Hispanic babies.” Hannah could hardly hear the words she was speaking for the undertones in this conversation. If Brian…

But that was impossible. She’d known him since college. Had loved him like a brother. He’d been a great friend. And a great husband to her best friend, Cara. More, he’d helped Hannah adopt Carlos, had been her son’s doctor and watched over Carlos as diligently as if the baby was his own. His and Cara’s.

Cara. He’d taken her death hard.

Hard enough to quietly, gradually, unhinge him as the article implied?

“You know better than anyone how much time I dedicate to SIDS awareness, education, research and fund-raising.” Brian’s voice, lacking any hint of his usual charm, fell flat.

“Yeah,” she said, also remembering the months after the accident. The bitterness that had poured out of Brian in his darkest moments, usually after imbibing more alcohol than he’d had during even the most raucous college parties. His wife, the only really close female friend Hannah had ever had, was killed by an illegal immigrant—a young man who’d crossed the Arizona/Mexico border with his parents as a child, without paperwork and, therefore, without the means to take drivers’ training or get a license.

“The fund-raising is part of the problem.”

“How so?”

“Without some SIDS deaths, there’d be no funding.”

“Without SIDS, we wouldn’t need the funding.”

“The implication is that some of the funds we raise line your pockets.” Hannah didn’t believe it for a second. If for no other reason than because Brian didn’t need the money. That wasn’t the implication that bothered her.

“You know me better than that,” he said when she didn’t continue.

“I think he only put in that part to explain away the volunteer time you spend on behalf of SIDS victims. They can’t write an ugly exposé and have you coming off looking good.”

“So why write one at all?”

And here was the real problem.

“It talks about Cara and the accident.”

Hannah could tell by his silence that he was hurting. And she hurt with him. Even while looking for reassurance that he was as sane as anyone. As incapable of killing another human being as she was.

“There’s a picture of the car, a line about you screaming at the other driver while they tried to cut Cara free from the wreckage.”