“Lucy and Noah.”
“How old are they?”
Emily counted silently.
“Mommy said twelve days.”
Angela’s chest tightened.
“And you took care of them?”
Emily nodded.
“When Mommy wouldn’t wake up, Noah cried. Lucy cried louder.”
“What did you feed them?”
“The bottles in the fridge.”
“For three days?”
Emily hesitated.
“I warmed them like Mommy showed me. But yesterday there weren’t any more.”
Angela turned away briefly so the child would not see her expression.
A paramedic named Marcus Hale crouched beside Emily.
“We need to find your house.”
Emily didn’t know the address.
She knew the white mailbox with a red reflector.
She knew there was a broken tractor near one turn and a church with a blue roof near another.
She remembered walking past a gas station and crossing a narrow bridge where trucks frightened her.
Marcus and another paramedic began reconstructing the route.
“How far did you walk?” Angela whispered.
Emily shrugged.
“Until my legs hurt. Then I rested. Then I pushed again.”
Marcus’s face changed.
From her description, he estimated the house might be nearly seven miles away.
Seven miles.
A six-year-old.
Two newborn babies.
A wheelbarrow.
Then Emily suddenly reached beneath her sweatshirt.
A small brass key hung from a piece of string around her neck.
“Mommy says I can’t lose this.”
Marcus held out his hand.
“Can I borrow it so we can help her?”
Emily stared at him.
“Will you bring Mommy here too?”
“Yes.”
“You won’t leave her by herself?”
“No.”
Slowly, Emily pulled the string over her head.
“Okay.”
She placed the key into his palm.
Marcus closed his fingers around it.
Then he ran.
Emily watched the ambulance disappear through the glass doors before finally sinking into the chair.
Angela wrapped a blanket around her.
For several minutes, Emily said nothing.
Then she whispered, “Is Noah going to die?”
Angela’s eyes burned.
“The doctors are helping him.”
Emily nodded as though she had been given an assignment.
She sat straighter.
Across the hospital, alarms sounded behind the pediatric doors.
Miles away, Marcus Hale’s ambulance turned onto a narrow county road, following Emily’s strange collection of landmarks.
White mailbox.
Broken tractor.
Blue-roof church.
Long driveway.
At the end of it stood a small farmhouse with every curtain closed.
Marcus ran to the door.
The brass key fit.
He pushed inside.
“EMS!”
No answer.
The living room was cold.
Baby bottles covered the kitchen counter
