Everything After - Jill Santopolo Page 0,71

you weren’t here. And your phone still wasn’t ringing. What’s going on?”

She sat down next to Ezra, still holding Zoe, still with a diaper bag on her shoulder. Her body ached and her mind felt like she was thinking through pea soup. “I’d been waiting for you to call, and then Tessa did, and I had to handle that.” She yawned. “And at some point my phone died. I’m guessing before you started calling. I’m sorry. I haven’t slept all night.”

Zoe started to whimper. Emily looked down at her. “I think she probably needs a bottle. Or a new diaper. Or both.”

Ezra looked at her. “Explain to me again how you have your patient’s baby? This seems like a breach in ethics.”

Emily was so tired. She could barely process what he was saying. “It was the only way she would agree to stay in the psychiatric unit If I promised to take Zoe and keep her until her grandma could get here. I have to call Zoe’s grandma.”

Zoe’s whimpers turned into wails and Emily tried to rock her. “It’s okay,” she said. “You’re okay. We’ll get you a clean diaper soon. And how about a bottle?”

“I’ll take the baby,” Ezra said, after a moment. “You call the grandma.”

Emily handed Zoe over gratefully and then plugged her phone into the wall and dialed once it had enough power to light up again. Her stomach knotted, knowing what was about to come next. When she introduced herself and started explaining where Tessa was and why, her mother started crying.

“She’s going to be okay,” Emily said, echoing the words she’d just used with Zoe.

“I’ll be on the next flight from Cleveland as soon as I can book it,” she said.

“Okay, we’ll be here waiting for you,” Emily said, and gave the woman her address.

They hung up, and Emily went back to Ezra and Zoe, feeling completely drained.

Ezra had made a bottle for the baby from the powdered formula in the diaper bag and was sitting on the couch feeding her when Emily walked in. She couldn’t stop her brief smile when she saw him like that. But it disappeared when she remembered what she had to tell him. What they had to talk about.

“Hey,” she said.

He looked up. “How was the grandma?”

Emily shrugged, not sure how she even got through the call. “About what you’d expect. At least I was able to tell her that her daughter was still alive. That her granddaughter was safe.”

Ezra nodded. “At least she didn’t blame you.”

Emily sat down next to him. “That wasn’t fair of Malcolm’s mom,” she said. “And it wasn’t true. You know that, right? Want me to take Zoe?”

“Zoe and I have a good thing going,” he said, looking down at the baby. Emily wondered if there was an added analgesic quality to holding a baby, if Zoe made Ezra feel calmer. “We’re okay over here. And technically it was true. I didn’t save him. If I had figured something else out, he would’ve lived.”

Emily leaned against Ezra’s shoulder. If Zoe’s touch didn’t help, maybe hers would. Feeling his body against hers certainly helped Emily. “Or maybe you gave him an extra three or four years that he wouldn’t have had otherwise, if he’d seen a different doctor, gone to a different hospital.”

“It’s just . . .” Zoe had finished the bottle, and Ezra lifted her upright to burp her. “I go over every single treatment decision I made each time a patient dies, wondering what the outcome would’ve been if I’d done something different. And for Malcolm’s mom to say that . . .”

Zoe burped loudly and Ezra laughed. Then the baby did, too, reaching for Ezra’s glasses.

He let her take them, and Emily looked at him. He always seemed so vulnerable to her without his glasses on. As if a piece of his armor were missing.

“She seems like an easy baby,” Ezra said.

“I guess comparatively,” Emily answered. “But I don’t know if any baby is really easy. At least, not for a college kid at this point in her life.”

Emily leaned back against the couch and closed her eyes. She was past the point of exhaustion. She hadn’t slept in more than twenty-four hours.

“When you called me,” Ezra started, “was it because of your patient?”

Emily opened her eyes. “No,” she said, too tired to tell him anything but the complete truth, the words forming slowly in her brain. “It was because I was afraid I was going to lose you. I need