“No,” I said.
Her face tightened.
I softened my voice. “No work. Not until your doctor clears you. Your position and salary remain exactly as they are.”
She stared at me.
“And when you return,” I continued, “your schedule changes. Real breaks. Proper meals. Medical information on file only with your consent. No more pretending exhaustion is loyalty.”
Her eyes shone, but she blinked it away. “Thank you.”
Lucas tugged my sleeve. “Can we stay here tonight?”
“There are rules,” I said.
Owen’s face fell.
“But we can stay nearby until visiting hours end. And tomorrow morning, we’ll come back before breakfast.”
“Promise?” Lucas asked.
“Yes.”
It was the second promise I had made that day, and I intended to keep it.
After Claire fell asleep, the boys and I returned to the waiting area. Ruth arrived twenty minutes later, her face pale and drawn. She had worked for my family for eleven years, long enough to remember Evelyn, long enough to have seen my decline and said nothing.
Or perhaps she had said things I was too absent to hear.
“Mr. Whitmore,” she began, wringing her hands, “I am so sorry.”
I looked at her and felt the old impulse to be severe.
It would have been easy. Too easy.
Anger gives a person somewhere to stand when guilt makes the ground unstable.
But the boys were watching me.
So I chose carefully.
“What happened with the blood pressure pill can never happen again,” I said. “Not with Claire. Not with anyone on staff.”
Ruth nodded quickly. “I know. I panicked. She was shaking, and she kept saying she just needed to finish the boys’ laundry.”
“Why was she so afraid of losing the job?”
Ruth looked down.
“Ruth.”
“She had nowhere stable to go,” Ruth admitted. “She told me she was renting a room from a woman in Cicero, but the woman’s son came back from out of state and wanted the room. Claire was sleeping in her car some nights before you hired her.”
I felt the words physically.
Sleeping in her car.