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Author’s note: This is a character/ development chapter and contains no .
She knew she was speeding, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. Not even a pair of flashing lights in her rearview could possibly make her feel any worse as she drove to the hospital. Her baby was in trouble. Her beautiful darling Christina was taken to the hospital, and her mommy hadn’t been there for her. Instead, she’d been in a stupid meeting about headcount, and she’d blown off her husband’s texts to focus on her bosses.
It was a heartbreaking reminder that she’d been working too hard and one that she was sure her husband wouldn’t hesitate to use as an example whenever they had a fight about those things, which fortunately had been happening less in the last few weeks.
“Fuck!” she swore in frustration as she pounded the steering wheel in frustration. She couldn’t worry about any of that right now. Not how her husband was going to be a dick about this later, or even how this was probably all their babysitter’s fault. Those recriminations could wait until later. Right now, all Marcy had time for was to get to the hospital and to hate herself for not being here twenty minutes ago.
A few frantic minutes later, she’d parked and rushed into the emergency room to find her husband waiting for her. “I’m so sorry I was late,” she said, melting into his hug. “It’s just that I was”
“It’s okay,” Trevor soothed her as he held her tight. “It’s all going to be okay.” They stayed like that for a long moment, and Marcy was able to catch her breath.
“Where’s Christina,” she asked finally, now that she’d gotten herself sorted.
“Christina’s fine. I was just in there with the doctor. She’s going to be okay. She just aspirated a little milk, is all,” he explained patiently.
“But why aren’t you in there with her,” Marcy repeated, breaking free of his hug.
“Evelyn suggested I come out and wait for you. She’s in there with the doctors and Christina right now, so” her husband started to say, but she tuned him out after the first few words, and after ten seconds of him not saying anything she wanted to hear, she finally exploded.
“You left her in the care of that that… GIRL?!” Marcy practically yelled, drawing more than a few looks. “You should be in there, not some dumb college student that caused this whole problem to begin with!”
“Look, Evelyn did everything she right. She saw the problem. She dialed 911. She did exactly what we pay her for,” her husband protested, but Marcy was furious and walked past him. First, he left their daughter all alone in her hour of need, and then he took their babysitter’s side in this. It was unbelievable.
“Where is she,” Marcy asked, ignoring everything her husband said. “Where’s my baby.” First, she was going to make sure Christina was okay, and then she was going to fire that goodfornothing Instagram addict who let this happen.
That was the plan, anyway. By the time Trevor led her to the examination room she was supposed to be in, though, they discovered that the police had beaten them to it.
“Excuse me, excuse me my baby’s in there!” Marcy said, trying to push past the officer without success. “What do you think you’re doing? Is everything okay? Where’s Christina!”
“Everything is fine, ma’am,” the officer said simply. “We’re here on a child endangerment call, and my partner is having a little conversation with you… babysitter, is it?”
“I don’t know why you want to talk to Evelyn,” Trevor said, “But you can’t stop us from seeing our baby, so unless you want me to get my lawyer on the phone right now to start preparing a case of emotional distress and whatever else he deems appropriate, please let my wife see our daughter and have a conversation with Christina somewhere else. You can; she’s out of her mind with worry, can’t you?”
Marcy was more than a little annoyed that her husband appealed to her irrationality to get the police officer on his side, but as the man finally stepped aside, she couldn’t help but note that ism was good for something.
Inside, they found a doctor holding the sleeping baby and their crying babysitter talking to the police officer as she tried to keep her voice down.
“I’m telling you,” Evelyn said, “I don’t do anything like that. Not even pot. You can test me!”
“Why did you let them in here,” the questioning officer asked, turning towards them as they arrived.
Marcy ignored all that and rushed to the doctor to hold her child. Going to work after maternity leave was hard enough, but going to work after something like this…
“Will somebody tell me what happened for the love of Christ?” Marcy hissed, looking at everyone, including her husband, with suspicion. Someone was to blame for all this.
“Calm down, Ma’am,” the second officer told her. He was taller and darker than the first one, and the way he patronized her infuriated her. “After they ran a drug panel on your child, the hospital”
“You drugged my daughter?” Marcy hissed, glaring at Evelyn, which made the young woman burst into tears all over again.
“We don’t think that’s likely at this stage, actually. We’ll test her, of course, but we believe it was more likely that the formula you use was contaminated somehow. We’d like it if you could let us know what brand you got, as well as where and when you” The officer answered, boring her to tears. They’d only just started the investigation, and already they were way off.
“Look,” Marcy said, slowly and carefully so they wouldn’t get confused again, “I don’t use formula for my precious baby girl. I pump every night, so there’s no way that’s possible. It has to be something else.” She glared at Evelyn as she spoke, but apparently, they missed that subtle cue entirely because, by the time she was done talking, everyone was still staring at her.
“Ma’am, is it possible that you might have had too much to drink one night and pumped, inadvertently exposing your child to”
“No!” Evelyn yelled, loud enough to wake up her little Christina, who started bawling immediately. “I now see what you did…” she accused the officers as she went to work trying to soothe her little girl.
“Ma’am, would you be comfortable taking a drug test so we can” the second officer asked. This time, his voice had a hard edge to it, and she could tell this conversation wasn’t going to go anywhere she wanted it to.
“Absolutely not. In fact, I’m not saying another word to you until I’ve had a chance to speak with my lawyer,” she declared. If they were going to do their job and investigate Evelyn, then she might have been willing to go along with their bad attitudes, but not this. The idea that she would ever hurt her baby girl was ridiculous. “We’re going home now, and…”
“Ma’am, could you please hand the baby to your husband?” the officer asked, but she could tell it wasn’t a question.
“Why would I” she started to say, even as she saw the man reaching for his handcuffs.
“Ma’am, I’m placing you under arrest for child endangerment. You have the right to…” As he started talking and telling her all the things they said in the movies, Marcy just blanked out. This couldn’t be happening. Not to her. Not on a day like this.
“Call Dan,” she told her husband, talking about their lawyer as she handed her baby off to her husband. “He’ll know what to do.” Trevor nodded, but she could see a shade of suspicion in even his eyes, and that hurt her more than everything else put together.
Once she surrendered the baby, the police spared her the added humiliation of the handcuffs. Instead, they marched both her and Evelyn in for a drug panel. That, in itself, was humiliating, but Marcy was sure it would vindicate her and show who the real culprit was.
But when the tests came back, they released Evelyn and told Marcy they were taking her downtown.
“There has to be some kind of mixup,” she protested, but they ignored her, leading to the longest two hours of her life as she waited for her lawyer to appear and tell her what she should do.
The news only got worse when he arrived, though. They’d tested the breast milk in the fridge and searched her house. Everything had come up positive for barbiturate use.
“But that can’t be!” she pleaded. “I haven’t even smoked weed since we found out I was expecting; you have to believe me!” Dan nodded along with her, but she could tell he didn’t believe her. Not really.
“I’m not the one you’re going to have to convince,” he answered noncommittally. “The judge is going to want to know how barbiturates you don’t have a prescription for wound up in your breast milk and caused little Christina to have trouble breathing. Your husband can get you out on bail, but we need to…”
He kept talking after that. At $200 an hour, all he seemed to know how to do was talk, but she knew the truth. She didn’t have a problem. Someone else had set her up, and she knew if she blamed Evelyn for it, she would just come across as a crazy person. So, she kept it to herself and brooded while her lawyer told her what to say to get her out of this.
She didn’t speak at the bail hearing either. She just let her lawyer do the talking, and when the judge said she could get released with $10,000, she just waited for her husband to write the check.
Their reunion didn’t go quite as she’d imagined, though. He bailed her out of jail, but he was quiet from the moment he met up with her, and his eyes were about as hard as they could get.
They only got as far as the parking lot before the argument exploded.
“You think I did it, don’t you?” she asked as they got to the family car. She didn’t see Christina in a car seat, so that meant that the stupid girl that had caused all this had her, and that royally pissed Marcy off.
“I don’t know what to think,” Trevor said, leaning against the driver’s side of the hood. “Our babysitter has to call 911 because our daughter is turning blue, and they find drugs in your breast milk.”
“I didn’t” Marcy started.
“They found your sleeping pills in your nightstand when they searched our house, Marcy. I saw them put them in a little baggie,” her husband said, making her jaw fall open in disbelief.
“Why would you let them search our house?” she gasped.
“Because I have nothing to hide, and I thought you didn’t either,” he answered coldly.
“Those are just herbal supplements,” she protested, her eyes tearing up.
“I’m not talking about the herbal supplements,” he clarified. “I’m talking about the bottle next to them. The prescription bottle with someone else’s name on it.”
“I can’t believe you don’t believe me,” she said, trying not to cry.
“And I can’t believe you couldn’t talk to me,” Trevor yelled suddenly, making her take a step back. “If you had a problem, you could have told me. We could have”
“The only problem I have is that my husband is an asshat who believes the babysitter more than he believes his wife and” she yelled back, getting in his face.
“This isn’t about Evelyn, and It’s not about me, Marcy. This is about you putting our daughter’s life in danger because you’re so stressed out from work that you” This time, he talked over her, but he wasn’t yelling. He was speaking in that tone he used when he was trying to backpedal and ‘avoid escalation,’ as he called it.
“You’re unbelievable,” she shot back, shaking her head. “You always make this about my job.”
“Why else would you be taking someone else’s prescription for narcotic sleeping pills?” This time, when Trevor spoke, he just sounded sad, but she wasn’t falling for that this time.
“Enough with these pills. They don’t exist,” she said, sounding completely exasperated. “I’m not sure if I want to come home tonight with a man that won’t even believe me about this.”
She regretted the words as soon as they’d come out of her mouth, but it was too late to take them back. She could practically see the way that they cut the man she loved in front of her, but it was his own fault. He’d just have to apologize and live with the damage he’d done.
He didn’t, though. He was just quiet for a long moment before he finally said, “Then maybe you shouldn’t. Maybe you should get a hotel for a couple nights until all this cools off and the facts are clearer. Then we could”
“Don’t you dare patronize me,” she spat back, enraged that he would say that.
“I could give you a ride. We could” he started trying to backpedal, but she wasn’t going to let him.
“Don’t, just don’t. I’ll call an Uber. I don’t want you to be anywhere near me until you’ve given me a sincere apology, Trevor.” she said, stepping away from him and folding her arms across her chest. “I don’t want to be anywhere near you until you believe me again. I’m your wife. Your wife. That’s supposed to mean something!”
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