Brent glanced toward both children once more.
Whatever had happened to Whitney, and whatever explanation awaited him, he knew that the most important thing was making sure Tyler and Annie received the care and reassurance they needed.
And as the hospital came into view, Brent realized that the unanswered calls might be connected to something far more complicated than he had initially imagined.
PART 2
“I need help! She’s unresponsive!”
The panic in Brent’s voice froze the entire waiting room.
The medical team converged on them within seconds. They lifted Annie onto a gurney and rushed her through the double doors to start emergency IV lines in her thin, dehydrated arms. A grim-faced attending physician took Brent aside into a harsh, fluorescent-lit corridor.
“Mr. Ashford,” the doctor began, his tone clinical but edged with alarm. “Her temperature is 104.2. Her blood pressure is dangerously low. Her kidneys are showing signs of serious stress from severe dehydration and malnutrition, and her asthma has gone completely unmanaged, which is making her breathing worse. She hasn’t had anything substantial to eat or drink in at least seventy-two hours. If you had found her a few hours later…”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to.
Brent felt the blood drain out of him. The cooperative, accommodating, peace-keeping ex-husband didn’t survive that corridor.
He sat beside Annie’s bed in the pediatric intensive care unit for hours, holding her small, bruised hand, listening to the steady beep of the monitor and praying to a God he hadn’t spoken to in years. Just before dawn, her breathing finally stabilized. He left Tyler asleep in a recliner under the watchful eye of an overnight nurse and drove back through the gray morning light to Whitney’s rental house. He needed the children’s clothes and Annie’s nebulizer.
