A Faint Cold Fear by Karin Slaughter Page A

bleeding. They'll do a C-section to remove-' Sara stopped, holding her breath.
    'The baby,' Cathy finished, and Eddie slumped against her.
    Sara slowly let the breath go.
    'What else?' Cathy asked. 'What are you not telling us?'
    Sara looked away but told them, 'They might have to perform a hysterectomy if they can't get the bleeding under control.'
    Her parents were both quiet at the news, though Sara knew what they were thinking as clearly as if they were screaming it at her. Tessa had been their only hope for grandchildren.
    'Who did this?' Cathy finally asked. 'Who would do such a thing?'
    'I don't know,' Sara whispered, the question echoing in her mind. What kind of monster would stab a pregnant woman and leave her for dead? 'Does Jeffrey know anything?' Eddie asked, and Sara could tell the effort it took for her father to say Jeffrey's name.
    'He's doing everything he can,' Sara told him. 'I'll go back to Grant as soon as…' She could not finish.
    Cathy asked, 'What can we expect when she wakes up?'
    Sara stared at her father, wanting to say something that would make him look up at her. If Eddie and Cathy had been anyone else, Sara would have told them the truth: that she had no idea what they should expect. Jeffrey often said that he didn't like to talk to the relatives or friends of victims until he had something concrete to tell them. Sara had always thought this was a little cowardly on his part, but now she saw it was necessary, that people needed some kind of hope, some assurance that at least one thing would turn out all right.
    'Sara?' Cathy prompted.
    'They'll want to monitor cranial activity. Probably do an EEG to make sure her brain isn't damaged.'
    Sara grappled for something positive to say. Finally she told them the only thing she knew for certain. 'There are a lot of things that could have gone wrong.'
    Cathy had no more questions. She turned toward Eddie, closing her eyes, pressing her lips to his head.
    Eddie finally spoke, but he still would not look at Sara. 'You're sure about the baby?'
    Sara found she had trouble speaking. Her throat felt as dry as the riverbed when she managed to whisper, 'Yes, Daddy.'
    Sara stood at the vending machine outside the hospital cafeteria, punching the button on the snack machine until she felt a sharp pain in her knuckles. Nothing happened, and she bent down, checking the hopper, thinking she might have missed something. The bin was empty.
    'Dammit,' she said, kicking the machine. With little fanfare, a KitKat dropped down.
    Sara unwrapped the package, walking down the hallway to get away from the noise of the cafeteria.
    The food service had changed since she'd worked at the hospital. They served everything from Thai cuisine to Italian to juicy, thick hamburgers now. She imagined that it was a money pit for the hospital, but it did not make sense that a place dedicated to healing sold such unhealthy food.
    Even at close to midnight, the hospital was throbbing with people, and the constant noise made it like walking around a beehive. Sara could not remember the noise from her internship, but she was certain it had been the same. Fear and sleeplessness had probably kept her from noticing. Back before interns had gotten organized and started to demand more humane hours, shifts at Grady ran twenty-four to thirty-six hours long. To this day Sara felt she had yet to catch up on her sleep.
    She leaned her back against a door marked linen, knowing that she would never get up if she sat down again. Tessa had been out of surgery for three hours, and they had moved her to the ICU, where the family was taking turns staying with her. She was heavily sedated and had not yet woken up from surgery. Her condition was listed as guarded, but the surgeon thought the bleeding was under control. Tessa could still have children if she ever recovered enough from the ordeal in the forest to want one again.
    Being in the tiny ICU room with Tessa, feeling Eddie and Cathy's blame though they had