Still nothing. She straightened, looking at "Nathaniel." "Sir, it's gone." Nathaniel's eyes moved slowly across the lobby, the thinning crowd near the doors, the strangers already lowering their phones and turning away, now that the ambulance lights had started flashing through the windows. Callahan still standing, motionless by the desk where this had all begun.
"Nobody leaves this lobby," he said, "until that page is found." The paramedics eased Dolores onto the gurney with the practiced gentleness of people who had done this a thousand times, wrapping a blood pressure cuff around her arm while she protested that she was fine, only a little rattled. Nothing that required an ambulance. Nathaniel stayed at her side, one hand around hers, watching the numbers on the monitor with the specific dread of a son who had already lost one parent to a heart that gave no warning before it stopped. "98 over 60," the lead paramedic said quietly.
"Elevated heart rate. We should transport." "No hospital," Dolores said. "I have grandbabies expecting me for dinner." ""Mom."" ""Nathaniel."" "I did not survive a stroke to be dramatic over a folder." He didn't argue with her directly.
He simply nodded to the paramedic, who understood the nod for what it was, and continued preparing her for transport anyway. Behind them, the lobby had not emptied. If anything, it had grown. Officers from upstairs drawn down by the radio chatter. A pair of internal affairs investigators already conferring near the front doors, phones still raised throughout the crowd.
Though the drama in front of them had shifted from confrontation to something quieter and in its way worse. Nathaniel stood, finally, and turned to face Callahan directly for the first time since he'd crossed the lobby. "Badge and weapon. Now." "Sir, please.
I have a family. I misread the situation. I'll admit that, but you didn't misread it. You never read it at all. Not the birth date, not the height, not the folder she handed you with her own name printed on the cover.
You decided who she was the second you saw the chair, and everything after that was just you looking for reasons to be right." Callahan's hands shook as he unclipped the badge. He held it out, and for a moment neither man moved to take it. The small piece of metal suspended between them like something neither wanted to be the one to release first. "You'll be on administrative leave pending Internal Affairs review," Nathaniel said, taking it.
"Excessive force, improper detainment, denial of medical consideration for a woman who told you outright she'd had a stroke." "Sir, I really didn't know who she was." "That's not supposed to matter." Nathaniel said. "That's the entire point you missed."
Priya still behind the intake desk spoke up before she could stop herself. "Chief, I tried to tell him the details didn't match. Twice." Nathaniel looked at her properly for the first time. "What's your name?"
"Priya Anand." "You'll be giving a full statement to Internal Affairs, Ms. Anand. Not as someone in trouble, as someone who did her job when the person beside you didn't." She nodded and something in her posture loosened for the first time in 20 minutes.