Chapter 3 - THE RADIOLOGY WINDOW
Grace Bennett told Claire not to build a theory too quickly.
“Timeline first.”
Claire hated that.
She wanted an answer.
Grace wanted records.
They obtained the imaging report from the original emergency visit.
The radiologist could not identify an exact time of injury.
But the surgeon’s later review estimated the tissue changes were more consistent with trauma occurring several hours before the emergency scan, not necessarily during afternoon recess.
That widened the window.
Morning.
Home.
Car ride.
Bus stop.
School.
Claire asked the surgeon:
“Can you tell if someone hit him?”
“No.”
“Can you tell if it was a fall?”
“No.”
“What can you tell me?”
“Blunt trauma.”
That phrase was both useful and useless.
Then the school nurse, Karen Doyle, gave Claire something else.
Her original handwritten intake note.
1:06 p.m.
EVAN REPORTS ABDOMINAL PAIN SINCE MORNING.
Claire stared.
“Since morning?”
Karen nodded.
“He told me it started before lunch.”
“Why didn’t anyone call me earlier?”
“He said it wasn’t bad.”
Then Karen hesitated.
“He also asked if I had to call his father.”
Claire’s heart stopped.
“What exactly did he say?”
Karen checked her note.
DO YOU HAVE TO CALL DAD?
Then:
PLEASE CALL MOM INSTEAD.
Karen had called the primary contact number listed in the system.
Robert.
Claire pressed her fingers to her mouth.
Her son had asked for her.
The system called him anyway.
Then Karen handed Grace a second page.
A note from three months before the surgery.
Evan had visited the nurse with a bruised shoulder.
Reason entered:
BUMPED INTO GARAGE DOOR.
May you like
Claire had never heard about it.
And the parent who picked him up that day was Robert.
