Chapter 6

The first thing that happened after the screams died down — no, there were no screams, the hallway was silent, but there was a pressure, a sound pressed between all the chests in the corridor — was that the elevator doors opened again. A young woman in pale blue scrubs walked out, carrying a coffee tray, and she stopped mid-stride when she saw the tableau before her: the doctor with the envelope, the crying baby, the milk spreading on the tile, the man pressed against the wall who looked like he'd been struck by lightning. She looked at it for a full second, her brain computing the scene this way and that, and then she turned around and got back on the elevator without saying a word. The doors slid shut.

It was almost funny. It would have been funny, if anyone had been capable of laughing.

"Ms. Raval," Dr. Okafor said, and his voice was gentle, patient, the voice he used with patients who were about to hear hard news. "I need to ask you a question."

Priya looked up at him. Her eyes were red, her face blotchy, the emerald green blouse stained with milk and baby spit-up. She looked like a woman who had been peeled down to something raw.

"Did you know?" Dr. Okafor asked. "When you helped Mr. Calloway speak to that nurse, and when you signed the document that was placed in this file — did you know it was a lie?"

Priya's face crumpled. "I didn't," she said. "I swear, I didn't know he'd paid a doctor. I thought—I thought Derek was telling me the truth. I thought Mara was struggling. I thought she was unstable. He showed me emails, he showed me messages where she was upset, he showed me—" She stopped. "He showed me a note from the clinic. A note that said her test results were abnormal. He said the treatment had failed because of her. Why would I not believe him?"

"Because you knew her," Mara said.