I met Hannah two days later in the parking lot of a small coffee shop twenty minutes from the hospital.
She looked exhausted.
Her hands shook around her paper cup.
“I’m sorry,” she said before I could even sit down. “I am so sorry.”
I wanted to hate her.
I wanted to hate everyone who had been in that room.
But when she looked at me, I saw someone carrying a truth that was crushing her too.
“You tried to stop them,” I said.
Tears filled her eyes.
“I did. I told them. I pointed to the allergy band. I pointed to the chart. They ignored me.”
“Why was there a video?” I asked.
She swallowed.
“Part of it was ICU monitoring footage. Part of it came from an internal review recording. After Grace died, they held a meeting. I wasn’t supposed to have access, but I knew something was wrong. I copied what I could before it disappeared.”
“Why put it in her sweater?”
“Because your husband came to collect her things first.”
My blood went cold.
“He came before I did?”
Hannah nodded.
“He came to ask what belongings remained. He wanted to make sure nothing ‘confusing’ was sent home. That was the word he used. Confusing.”
I closed my eyes.
There it was again.
That sharp, clean pain of betrayal.
Hannah leaned forward.
“I knew if I handed it directly to you in the hospital, someone might see. So I hid it where only a mother would look carefully.”
Grace’s sweater.
The one I would hold.
The one I would smell.
The one Daniel probably expected me to avoid because it hurt too much.
“What happens now?” I asked.
Hannah took a shaky breath.
“I’ll testify.”
