Denny went into the kitchen, to give them a minute, and because he did not want them to see his face. He stood at the sink and looked at the whiteboard on the refrigerator, at the columns of times and numbers in Lauren Dalby's square handwriting. 4:40 — 6 units Humalog — BG 247 — pump dead. 6:35 — 4 units — BG 318 — ketones sm/mod. And at the bottom, in different handwriting, in purple marker, round and careful, a child's: 8:29 RUTHIE WENT TO STIMSONS. 61 STEPS. Next to it, a little drawing of a flashlight with rays coming out of it.
He got out his phone and called Joyce.
"Did you get the meter?" Joyce said, instead of hello.
"No," said Denny. "I need you to do something for me."
There followed, as there sometimes did in the Albrecht household, a short silence in which a woman who had been married to a policeman for thirty-five years recalibrated her evening.
"Where are you?"
He told her.
When Lauren Dalby had stopped shaking, and Ruthie had stopped crying and gone to wash her face, the three of them called the answering service again, and at 9:22 Dr. Susan Ahn called back. Denny listened to Lauren's half of it from the kitchen doorway, the calm phone voice back again, steadier than it had any right to be. Eighteen units of Lantus at 8:58. Correction at 9:04. Three seventy-one. Moderate to large. Vomited twice, once just water. No, not confused. No, breathing okay. Then a long pause, and Lauren closing her eyes.
"I know what the guideline says," she said. "I know. But there's nobody to stay with my son. He's on a vent. There's no one. If I go in, they'll have to take him too, and you know what the ER is for a trach baby in October, it's RSV central, it's—" She stopped. She listened. "Yes. Yes. I understand." Another pause. She opened her eyes and looked across the room at Denny, in the kitchen doorway, with an expression he could not read. "There's — actually, there's a police officer here."
Denny came over and held out his hand for the phone, and she gave it to him.
Dr. Ahn sounded young and very tired and very clear. She explained it to him the way you explain something to a man you are about to put in charge of it. Lauren had the long-acting on board now; that was the most important thing. The vomiting was a warning, not yet a verdict. Small sips of fluid, every few minutes. Recheck her sugar and her ketones every two hours. If she vomited again, or if the ketones went to the darkest square, or if she got confused, or sleepy in a way you couldn't easily wake her from, or if her breathing changed — got deep and fast, like she'd been running — then it was 911, no discussion, and somebody else would have to figure out the baby. Could he stay? Could someone stay with her the night?