The lobby suddenly seems much more crowded than when I first walked in. It’s also far noisier. All these people seem to be walking faster than normal. I’m used to the pace and the crowd of GUH. When you work at GUH—or any big hospital complex, for that matter—you get used to big crowds. It is a place with hundreds of doctors and med students and nurses, thousands of patients, visitors, technicians, custodians, cooks, ER people, paramedics, ambulance drivers, physiotherapists.

But this? This looks almost like a crowd surging out of a stadium after a football game. I feel as if the crowd is pressing in on Sarkar and Tracy Anne and me. Then, another surprise from the crowd. They all begin parting into two groups, forming a sort of cleared passage in the middle. I look at the central point of the passage and see Leon Blumenthal walking quickly. Next to Blumenthal, trying to keep up with him, is Dr. Barrett Katz. Katz is in his usual blue Brooks Brothers button-down shirt, but his tie is askew, his collar unbuttoned. His suit jacket is missing. I realize I’ve never seen our CEO without a suit jacket before. On the other side of Katz is a uniformed police officer, a woman. Behind this officer is another officer, a man. It seems as if everyone but this group of four is holding a cell phone in the air. It looks like all the phone cameras are aimed at Dr. Katz.

I break through my area of the crowd, and I rush toward Blumenthal and Katz. I push myself into Blumenthal’s face. Katz and the officers look at the two of us, but they keep on moving.

“Not now, Lucy,” Blumenthal says. He tries to move past me, but I stand firmly in front of him. He bumps into me. But I’m going to hold my ground.

“What’s happening, Detective?” I ask.

“I’ve got to go,” he says. He looks over my head. I assume he’s looking for Katz and his escorts. Then I realize that Blumenthal and I have attracted attention, a small group of men and women with cell phone cameras and other recorders are aiming them at us.

I say as quietly as I can, “You lied to me last night. There were two other babies taken…kidnapped. You knew that. And you sent me home like a little kid.”

He grabs me by the shoulders. “I sent you home because you were exhausted and confused and in a state of shock. I did it for you,” he says.

“That’s bullshit,” I say. I know he’s lying. But I’m exploding with questions.

“Whatever’s happening with Katz, does this have to do with the missing babies?” I ask.

Blumenthal says nothing. Then comes a barrage of questions from the small group of reporters who have not followed Katz but instead stayed to watch Blumenthal and me.