Chapter Twelve A: The Hospital Corridor
The hospital smelled of floor polish and burnt toast when Emily arrived the next morning.
She found Nadia sitting outside a pediatric examination room with a paper cup untouched between her hands.
Lucia had asked to see Emily, but the nurses were still checking her breathing after the long hours inside the bus.
Nadia stood when Emily approached.
“I almost didn’t call you,” she admitted.
“Why not?” Emily asked.
“Because everyone who helped us has already given more than they should have to give.”
Emily sat beside her.
“You didn’t ask me to do anything dangerous,” she said.
Nadia studied the ceiling tiles.
“I asked you to listen while my daughter was trapped,” she answered.
“I keep hearing her voice when I close my eyes.
”
Emily did not try to reassure her with promises about what would happen next.
She remembered Lucia whispering the roadside market’s name into a phone she had been told to hide.
She remembered the silence after the connection broke.
“You kept her talking,” Emily said.
“She knew you were there.”
Nadia pressed her lips together and nodded once.
A nurse opened the examination room door.
“Lucia is ready for her visitor,” she said.
Emily entered expecting a frightened child beneath a blanket.
Instead, Lucia sat upright with her hair tied into two untidy braids and a coloring book spread across her knees.
She was drawing a bus with enormous windows.
“You sound different in person,” Lucia said.
“So do you,” Emily replied.
“On the phone you sounded taller.”
Lucia laughed,
then stopped when the laugh made her cough.
Emily waited while she caught her breath.
“Did they find everybody?” Lucia asked.
“They found the people who were on your bus,” Emily answered.
Lucia looked at the drawing.
“That wasn’t everybody.”
Emily pulled a chair closer.
“Who else was there?”
“A woman in a green coat was supposed to come with us,” Lucia said.
“She had a little notebook and kept asking why they were taking us north.”
Emily recognized the description of Inez Calder.
“Inez was found,” she said.
“She was separated from the others, but she got help.”
Lucia shook her head.
“I don’t mean her.”
She turned the coloring book around.
Behind the bus she had drawn a small white van with a red stripe near the back wheel.
“The driver made that van go first,” she said.
“There were people inside who never got on our bus.”
Emily felt the temperature of the room change although the heater continued humming.
“Did you see their faces?” she asked.
“One man was holding a baby carrier,” Lucia answered.
“The carrier was empty, but he kept checking it.”
Nadia appeared in the doorway just as Lucia began explaining the white van.
She heard enough to stop walking.
“Why didn’t you tell the deputy?” Nadia asked.
Lucia lowered her pencil.
“Nobody asked about the other van,” she said.
Emily looked at Nadia.
“We should tell Deputy Kent,” she said.
Nadia reached for her daughter’s hand.
“We will,” she answered.
“But first you are going to finish your breakfast.”
Lucia pointed at the tray beside the bed.
“I don’t like the eggs,” she announced.
Emily glanced at the untouched toast.
“Then we can start with the toast,” she said.
Lucia pushed the tray toward her.
“Will you sit until I finish?”
Emily stayed.
She knew the next conversation would be difficult, but the girl had earned ten quiet minutes without another stranger asking questions.
