The policeman’s words hung in the cold air of the emergency room as I felt the blood slowly drain from my face, as if my body had decided to abandon me at the cruellest possible moment.
“My husband?” I repeated in a dry voice, unable to understand why the police would be here while my family struggled to breathe behind a blue curtain that suddenly seemed like an impossible wall to cross.
The officer, a tall man with a rigid jaw and tired eyes, held my gaze for a few seconds that seemed too long, as if he were measuring each word before letting it out of his mouth.
“Mrs. Grant, we need you to come with us for a moment,” he said finally, with a rehearsed calm that made me feel as if the ground had tilted beneath my feet.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I replied in a whisper. “My son is in there and he’s not breathing properly, so someone will have to explain to me why I can’t see him.”
Dr. Marcus Hale then stepped forward, placing a hand on my shoulder with a gentleness that contrasted brutally with the storm raging inside my chest.
“Emma,” he said softly. “It’ll only be a moment, I promise, but it’s important that you speak with them before you go back into the trauma area.”
I looked at him as if he had just betrayed me in the deepest way imaginable, because Marcus was not only a colleague but also a friend who had been to my house countless times.
“What’s happening?” I asked, feeling tears begin to blur my vision as I tried to maintain the control this job always demanded.
The second police officer, a woman with dark hair pulled back tightly, held a small transparent bag that I immediately recognized as medical evidence, and inside it was something that made my heart pound violently.
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