Page 14 of Hidden Truths

He pressed harder.

He was suffocating little Molly. He’d done it before. This time, he meant to finish the job.

Kellen shrieked, “No!” and lunged at him. She passed through the bed, through Molly’s panic, through Mr. Quinby’s twisted excitement, and found herself on the other side.

She was a ghost. She could do nothing.

Yet when she stumbled, wild with fury and out of balance by her charge, her shoulder hit Molly’s IV pole. She felt the impact reverberate all the way to the tips of her nonexistent fingers. The pole hit the floor with the clang so loud it sounded like the knell of a large bell. The fluid bottle shattered. Saline and nutrients spread across the floor.

Mr. Quinby swung around, pillow in hand, faced the door, looked around wildly.

Molly took a breath, and her panic erupted in a scream, another scream, another. She screamed shrilly, loudly, like a siren call of distress.

Medical personnel and security people boiled through the door. Nurses and doctors raced to Molly’s side, placed an oxygen mask over her face, held her and reassured her. The security men, led by the technician who had changed the light, grabbed Mr. Quinby’s arms and removed the pillow from his grasp.

“I didn’t do it,” he said. “I didn’t knock it over. I don’t know why it fell, but I didn’t knock it over!”

The technician pointed up toward the ceiling. “That wasn’t a light I changed. I installed a camera. We saw what you did. We recorded what you did! To your child. To that little girl! You dirty—” Frank wanted to hit Quinby. He shook with the need. His fist rose.

“Don’t do it!” Kellen lunged for his arm, desperate to stop him.

She slid right through him. Whatever had happened before, didn’t happen again.

One of the women in uniform must have had the same reaction; she grabbed Frank’s arm to stop him. “Don’t. Don’t give him any reason to claim abuse and get this thrown out of court.”

Quinby struggled against the cuffs the security guards placed on his wrists. “I’m a respectable businessman. I mean nothing but good for Molly. I’m her father!”

The medical professionals threw around phrases like Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy.

The security men talked about a long stretch of prison time.

Molly cried and gasped, sucking in all the oxygen she could.

“Makes you wonder what really happened to his wife,” Kellen heard Dr. Parkhurst say to Frank.

Kellen felt a satisfaction and a wonder; how had her so unsubstantial spirit hit the pole and had an effect? She didn’t understand it; maybe it wasn’t her spirit so much as her passions…

Yes. That was it. Her anger and indignation had blown the pole over, dashed it hard against the floor, created a distraction that pulled Mr. Quinby away from Molly, and gave the security team extra seconds to get in here.

She wanted to spend a moment to revel in her success in helping to save little Molly and put her father in prison.

But she had tohurry.

CHAPTER TEN

KELLENSLIPPEDUNNOTICEDthrough the turmoil to her next assignment, drawn to the nursery where she had first visited Baby Joy.

It was, she realized, early afternoon. Nurse Bernice at her desk, working on charts and reports, half-consciously listening for any alarms.

Baby Joy was out of her incubator, strapped to Mrs. Hibbert’s chest, resting quietly. Kellen could tell the baby had been given a kind of peace by the old lady, the rocking chair, maybe by her new name.

Kellen crept forward, not wanting to disturb the child or the woman who rocked the baby.

Little Joy opened her eyes and looked at Kellen…and Kellen knew.

The chair wasn’t rocking. Mrs. Hibbert wasn’t moving.

She was gone. She was dead. Her spirit had not lingered.

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