Plus One by Elizabeth Fama

night of his trial, the first moment of his reassignment. He was not allowed to say goodbye to me. He was not allowed to visit Poppu in the hospital. It was exactly like he died, except for the infrequent, vapid text messages that were worse than nothing: “Happy birthday, Sol. You’re growing up too fast.” He was an expert at getting uncensored messages through, and yet he wouldn’t do it for us, the people he used to pour his heart out to. Ciel the rebel had become Ciel the yes-man.
    Wending my way through the hospital corridors now, trying to keep up with Day Boy’s determined march, I realized with an odd nervousness that Ciel could be in this very building, at this very moment. His wife had delivered less than forty-eight hours ago; it was daytime, so Ciel was out and about; it was normal for a husband to visit with his wife and newborn as often and long as possible. And then something else occurred to me. The baby might be in the room with them, not in the nursery. How would I deal with that? How could I steal their daughter right out from under them? Just thinking about speaking to Ciel—or meeting the woman who had happily made her life with him without me and Poppu—made my stomach clench and my mouth dry.
    “Hey,” I said to Day Boy’s back. For some reason I couldn’t bring myself to say his real name.
    Irritatingly, he read my mind again. “D’Arcy,” he said over his shoulder.
    “Whatever. I’m wondering what we do if the baby is—”
    He turned and stopped so abruptly that I almost crashed into him. “Not whatever . D’Arcy.”
    “Listen, Day Boy,” I said without thinking. “There’s no point in first names between us. In twenty minutes you’ll never have to deal with me again. And won’t that be a relief?” I tried to walk around him, even though I didn’t know where we were going.
    He stepped in front of me. “What did you call me?”
    I looked at the ceiling with a huff. “Forget it.”
    He closed his eyes, summoning patience, and then opened them again. “The way I calculate it, in twenty minutes we’ll have seen your niece and be on our way back to the ER, where I’m going to remove that popped stitch, re-dress your wound, and get a script for some non-penicillin antibiotics, and you’re going to obey all the rules and stop extorting criminal favors from me.”
    He had remembered my drug allergy. Was he a machine or a man?
    “Right,” I said, realizing that I had slipped up by revealing that I thought I’d never see him again. How was I going to shake him loose after I stole the baby? I scrambled to cover my tracks. “I didn’t expect that you’d automatically get my case. There are other doctors in the ER.”
    “But it was my mistake, and I want to fix it.” He looked at me then as if he were trying to see inside of me—to figure out what made this wild animal tick. He gave up, turned, and started walking again. “You know, I could also be called to your summary hearing. So you may not be rid of me .”
    We approached a set of doors and Day Boy held up his ID to a reader on the wall, which had the effect of releasing the locking mechanism with a quiet sa-shink . He pulled the handle and held the door for me. And just like that, we were in the main hospital.
    A few meters in, we had to pass a receptionist sitting at a high desk, staring at a computer screen. She was a teenager—on the Administrative Apprentice track—which meant school was out for the day for Rays. I wondered for a second why Day Boy hadn’t been in school this whole time.
    “ID, please,” she said, not looking up, as we tried to walk by her.
    Day Boy grabbed my good fingers below the level of the desk, out of her view, to stop me. I nearly snatched my hand away until I realized what he was doing: my inclination was to barrel right through, looking as guilty and suspicious as I felt. My heart was beating so hard, I could feel it pushing against my ribs. He didn’t let go of me as he held up