Chapter 3 - Seven years earlier
The hospital explosion was not a bomb.
That mattered.
A construction crew hit a gas line beneath an adjacent medical building.
The blast damaged part of St. Vincent Regional Hospital.
Power failed.
Smoke spread.
Patients were evacuated.
Evelyn was there because she had developed severe abdominal pain late in pregnancy.
She was thirty-two weeks.
I was on the other side of the city.
By the time I reached St. Vincent, patients had been transferred to four hospitals.
Records were chaos.
A physician told me Evelyn had been moved to Mercy North.
Mercy North said no.
Then St. Vincent corrected:
She had been transferred to County Memorial.
County Memorial had admitted a pregnant woman matching her age.
That woman died.
So did her unborn child.
A nurse identified the personal effects.
Evelyn’s bracelet.
Evelyn’s coat.
Her wedding ring was missing.
Body badly injured?
Not unrecognizable.
But enough trauma and transfer confusion that identification relied partly on paperwork.
I was not allowed to see her immediately.
When I finally did, I saw a woman with facial injuries and bandaging.
I believed it was Evelyn.
Why?
Because doctors told me.
Because her belongings were there.
Because her chart number was there.
Because grief makes certainty attractive.
The death certificate:
Evelyn Halstead.
Cause:
Complications following blast-related trauma and placental abruption.
I buried her.
Empty? No. I buried the body identified as hers.
Seven years later, Thomas held records suggesting that woman had not been Evelyn.
Her name was:
Caroline West.
Age thirty-one.
Pregnant.
Similar height.
Similar hair.
May you like
Admitted the same afternoon.
Their transfer wristbands had been switched.
