"Is he breathing on his own? Please, tell me the pulse oximeter hasn't dipped below ninety-five."

I huddled in the corner of the oversized velvet armchair in the guest suite, my voice a frantic thrum as I pressed the burner phone to my ear. The suite was a masterpiece of French provincial design—silk wallpaper, gilded moldings, a bed that cost more than the house I grew up in—but I felt like I was vibrating out of my own skin.

"Ms. Harper, breathe," the nurse’s voice came through, calm and filtered. She sounded infinitely more patient than the exhausted residents in the public ward. "Noah is stable. Better than stable, actually....