The Blue Hat
Chapter 01 - The Blue Hat
Nine-year-old Lucas Hale sat on the edge of the emergency-room bed with both hands wrapped around a navy winter hat.
It was June.
Outside Saint Matthew’s Children’s Hospital, sunlight covered the parking lot. Inside, Lucas refused to remove the thick knitted cap pulled low over his blond hair.
Nurse Maya Collins crouched several feet in front of him.
“You can keep holding it,” she said. “I only need to check that you are safe.”
Lucas shook his head.
“My mom said nobody can look.”
The woman he called Mom was Victoria Hale, his father’s second wife. She had dropped him at school that morning, then disappeared after the principal called about his dizziness.
The school counselor brought Lucas to the hospital.
Maya noticed dark marks on the shoulder of his sweatshirt and a faint hospital sticker hidden beneath one sleeve. The sticker did not belong to Saint Matthew’s.
“Did you visit another doctor?” she asked.
Lucas looked toward the door.
“I’m not supposed to tell Dad.”
At that moment, Ethan Hale entered the emergency department.
He was still wearing the black jacket from a construction meeting. He stopped when he saw his son sitting beside the monitors.
“Lucas?”
The boy lowered his face.
Ethan crossed the room, but Maya raised one hand.
“Please move slowly. He is frightened.”
Ethan stopped.
Maya asked Lucas for permission again.
This time, he nodded.
She gently lifted the blue hat away.
Beneath his hair was a broad purple mark near his temple and a small square medical patch placed behind his ear.
Ethan’s face lost all color.
“What happened to him?”
Lucas covered his eyes.
Maya examined the patch.
A serial number was printed on the back.
It belonged to North River Behavioral Clinic, a private facility Ethan had never heard of.
Inside the lining of the hat, Maya felt something hard.
She opened a loose seam and removed a tiny memory card wrapped in plastic.
Lucas looked at Ethan.
“Mom said the hat would prove I was lying.”
Ethan knelt beside the bed.
“Which mom?”
May you like
Lucas began to cry.
“The one Victoria said was dead.”
