I couldn’t leave.
I stood beside the staff-room sink, staring at the damp cuffs of my scrubs.
Angela found me there.
“You should go home,” she said.
“Have they found her mother?”
“Not yet.”
I shook my head.
“That little girl knew something was wrong before anyone believed her.”
Angela leaned against the counter.
“You believed her.”
I thought about the moment Lily had flinched from my hand.
“Not quickly enough.”
“Marcus, you couldn’t have known what was inside that cast.”
“I could have asked why she was scared.”
Angela was quiet for a moment.
“And if she’d been too frightened to answer?”
I had no response.
At 7:18 p.m., Priya called my work phone.
“Marcus, are you still here?”
“Yes.”
“There’s something you should know.
Lily wants to speak to the same people who were in the room when we found the note.
The detective is arranging a trained forensic interviewer, but she asked whether you were still at the hospital.”
“Is she all right?”
“She’s stable.
And she keeps asking about the rabbit.”
I had seen the rabbit beside her pillow when she was moved upstairs.
“She has it,” I said.
“I know.
She’s worried David will take it.”
I swallowed.
“Tell her it’s with her.
She can keep it.”
After the call, I sat alone for a while.
The hospital kept moving around me.
Medication carts rolled across the corridor.
A baby cried somewhere on the next floor.
Someone laughed near an elevator.
I wondered how many adults had seen Lily’s fear before she reached my examination table.
A schoolteacher? A neighbor? Someone in a grocery store?
I wondered whether Rebecca had asked for help before she disappeared.
The following morning, Detective Laura Chen called me to arrange an interview about the cast and note.
She was careful not to disclose everything about the investigation, but she confirmed that police had obtained additional evidence from the house and were actively searching for Rebecca.
During my interview, I described the unusual resistance of the saw, the placement of the metal, and the folded paper.
Detective Chen laid photographs on the table.
One showed the object after the forensic team had examined it.
“Do you recognize this?” she asked.
“It’s the metal we found.”
“It’s a broken mounting bracket from a utility shelf in the basement.”
She showed me another photograph.
A strip of pink fiberglass lay on a sheet of evidence paper.
“This came from the second cast,” she said.
I looked at the rough edges.
“Was it from Lily?”
“We believe David tried to repair her original cast himself after damaging it.
A former employee at his workshop has also described seeing him purchase casting materials online.
We’re checking the timeline.”
The pieces began fitting together.
Lily’s cast had originally been applied by trained professionals.
But David had evidently tampered with it after she went home.
The pressure wound, the added metal, and the broken cast in the basement suggested that Lily had endured far more than one injury.
Detective Chen then asked a question I had been afraid to hear.
“Did Lily say anything about how the paper got inside?”
“Only that she put it there when he fixed the cast.”
Chen nodded.
“She gave a more detailed account to our child forensic interviewer.
I can’t
