“I beg your pardon, Miz DuVille?” The judge raised a brow.
“I said he must be plastered. To think that.” She waved an arm in Beth’s general direction. “I’d respectfully request to waive a bail argument until my client is transported to jail. This isn’t grave indifference, Your Honor. This is shock. This defendant is a child, Your Honor. A seventeen-year-oldchild,who had an abortion in the confines of her own home.”
“My God, you yourself were once in the same position as that poor defenseless baby,” Willie argued. “The difference is thatyouwere given a chance to exist.”
“Your Honor, if it please the court, may I say something?”
Judge Pinot settled more heavily on his swivel chair. “Something tells me you’re gonna whether I say yes or not.”
Mandy faced the prosecutor. “Willie, you can stand on top of Mount Everest and shout that life begins at conception all you want, but if this hospital was burning down and you had to decide between saving a fertilized egg in the IVF lab or a baby in the maternity ward, which would you choose?”
“That’s a false equivalence—”
“Which would you choose?” Mandy repeated.
“Nobody is trying to say it’s all right to kill a child in place of an embryo. This is about allowing the embryo to be born and—”
“Exactly. Thank you for proving my point. No onetrulybelieves that an embryo is equivalent to a child. Not biologically. Not ethically. Not morally.”
For a moment, the room was still. Then Willie said, “Unfortunately for you, the state of Mississippidoesbelieve they’re equivalent.” He flicked his eyes toward Beth. “There is no distinction in the law between whether she killed a grown adult or a fetus—”
“Allegedly killed,” Mandy murmured by rote.
“—except that had she murdered an adult, he could have cried for help.”
The judge cleared his throat. “Miz DuVille, we are a court of law, and in this state all that need concern us is that the child that was in the defendant’s body is now dead, and she was the proximate cause. For this reason I am setting bail at five hundred thousand dollars. The defendant will have twenty-four-hour-surveillance while she is in the hospital, and upon discharge, she will be released to the county jail. Court is adjourned.” He hefted himself out of the chair and pushed past everyone else with the bailiff close on his heels. At the door, he turned to Beth. “And you, young lady—may God have mercy on you.”
Beth was a devout Christian. She had worshipped Jesus, she had prayed to Him, she had trusted Him.
She believed in God.
She had her doubts, though, about whether God believed in her.
—
IT HAD BEEN NEARLY ANhour since Izzy put the chest tube into Bex, and she was running out of time. So much blood had drained out that it had soaked through two towels.
“Favor,” Bex said.
Izzy leaned down. “Anything.”
“You tell my niece…” she wheezed. “That this isn’t her fault.”
“You’re going to tell her yourself, Bex.”
A smile played over her lips, a shadow behind her pain. “I think we both know that isn’t so,” she said. She closed her eyes, and a tear slid down her cheek. “I wish I could tell him what I know. It’s not the goodbye that hurts the most. It’s the hole you’re left with.”
Izzy stared at her. She knew what it felt like to go without; it had been the guiding premise of her childhood. But she had never been what was missing. Once she told Parker it was over, she would be, though. Breaking someone’s heart, it seemed, caused equal damage to your own.
She didn’t know anything about Bex, except for the fact that she was an artist, and that she had a niece who was somehow still miraculously hidden. Bex’s life was a thread in someone else’s tapestry, and that was really all that mattered.
Izzy stood up and approached the shooter. “This woman is going to die without medical help,” she said.
“Then fix her.”
“I’ve done what I can, but I’m not a surgeon.”
She looked around the waiting room. It had gotten painfully silent since he had smacked Janine across the brow and knocked her out. Joy was sitting with her. Janine had stirred a few times, so Izzy knew she wasn’t dead. “I heard you on the phone,” Izzy blurted out.
