“If your description is accurate, you may have helped clear an airway obstruction before emergency services arrived.”
Jamie looked confused.
“Did I help her?”
“You may have, yes.”
His lower lip trembled.
“Even though I dropped her?”
Dr. Morris’s expression softened.
“Both things can be true. We need to establish exactly what happened.”
Claire immediately crossed her arms.
“So now he’s a hero?”
The doctor didn’t answer that.
Instead, she said, “Our priority is Sophie. We also need to report and document the circumstances of her injury, including how that object reached her.”
Something about those words unsettled Claire.
She stopped crying.
And for the first time, she asked a question that had nothing to do with Sophie’s condition.
“Do you really have to investigate that?”
## THE MEMORY I WISHED I COULD ERASE
By sunrise, Sophie was sleeping in a pediatric observation room.
Her breathing had improved.
