CHAPTER 4: The First Page of the Notebook
Nobody spoke when Quincy opened the notebook.
The emergency department was still bright, still cold, still filled with people, but the space around them felt sealed off from the rest of the hospital. The nurses near the reception desk stared in disbelief. A doctor slowly picked up his fallen clipboard from the floor but did not look away. Emily stood in the center of them all, one arm supporting Violet’s tiny body, the other hand trembling against the blanket.
Quincy turned to the first marked page.
His handwriting was small and uneven, the kind of writing that belonged to a seven-year-old trying hard to make every letter understood. Some words were misspelled. Some lines were crooked. But the dates were there. Times. Places. Names he had copied from badges he could not fully read. The details were too specific to be dismissed as imagination.
He cleared his throat.
“The first time was last month,” he said.
Naomi closed her eyes.
Garrett whispered, “Don’t.”
Quincy continued anyway.
“Grandma said if the baby was a girl, everything would change.”
Emily’s eyes moved to Naomi.
The older woman stood stiffly, Bible pressed so hard to her chest that her knuckles were pale. Her cold, judgmental face had begun to break at the edges. Panic, real panic, lived beneath her skin now.
Quincy read from the notebook.
“She said Emily would have a daughter and then Dad would forget his real family.”
Garrett stepped back as if the words themselves had pushed him.
Emily could barely breathe. She looked down at Violet, whose tiny fingers moved weakly against the blanket. Her daughter was alive, fragile, and held against the same chest that had carried her for months while Garrett and Naomi decided what she deserved.
The doctor signaled quietly to a nurse. “Get neonatal support here now.”
A nurse nodded and moved fast.
Emily tightened her hold. “She stays with me.”
The doctor’s voice was gentle. “She will. We just need to help her breathe stronger.”
Quincy looked up from the notebook. “There’s more.”
Garrett’s face had gone gray.
Naomi finally spoke. “This is sinful. Making accusations in a hospital, in front of strangers—”
Emily’s voice cut through hers.
“You told me my baby was dead.”
Naomi stared at her, and for the first time, she did not have a scripture ready.
Quincy turned another page.
“I wrote when Dad called the private nurse,” he said. “I heard him say Emily couldn’t know until it was finished.”
Garrett shook his head. “That is not what happened.”
The male doctor looked at him sharply. “Then explain what did happen.”
Garrett opened his mouth.
No answer came.
Because every answer required him to explain why a newborn declared dead had been found alive in a service area.
Quincy held the notebook tighter.
His voice became quieter.
“I thought if I wrote it down, someone would believe me later.”
Emily looked at him through tears.
“I believe you,” she whispered.
Quincy’s face crumpled slightly, but he forced himself to stay brave.
Garrett stared at the notebook as if it were a weapon.
It was not.
May you like
It was worse.
It was memory.
