Chapter 2
The Groom Leaves
Rowan climbed into the ambulance before his mother could take back her words.
The doors slammed on the cathedral steps, cutting off Celeste, the bells, and a hundred raised phones. Inside, Sloane sat strapped to the bench beside Milo's stretcher. A paramedic fitted a pediatric mask over the boy's face while his partner radioed the receiving hospital.
"Blackwood Children's confirms negative-pressure room twelve," the partner said. "Pediatric oncology attending is en route."
Sloane held Milo's hand. "His central line was removed after the last culture. Peripheral access can be difficult. He needs blood cultures before antibiotics if that won't delay them."
"We know the protocol, ma'am."
"She knows his history," Rowan said. "Listen to her."
Sloane's eyes cut toward him. His wedding tie was gone. Milo's sweat had darkened the front of his shirt, and a smear of blood marked one cuff where the paramedic had checked the boy's gums.
"Don't use me to practice being decent," she said.
The ambulance lurched into traffic. Rowan caught the overhead rail. His knee struck hers and stayed there until the vehicle cleared the corner. The contact was slight, but the old memory of her legs tangled with his arrived before he could stop it.
He shifted away.
"What did my mother mean?"
"Ask her."
"I am asking the person who brought a child with my face to my wedding."
Milo opened his eyes behind the oxygen mask. "Mom says I have her face."
Sloane stroked his knuckles. "You have my excellent nose."
"His mouth is yours," Rowan said.
Her hand stopped. Milo studied him, then touched his own upper lip.
The monitor chirped over a pothole. The paramedic read the blood pressure again and told them Milo was stable enough for transport. Rowan had negotiated acquisitions under federal review without losing the thread. In the ambulance, every number from the monitor struck him in a place with no armor.
His phone showed thirty-one calls. He answered Celeste's.
"Tell me you're turning around," she said. Music and voices crowded behind her. "We can delay forty minutes and still execute the trust documents."
"The wedding is over for today."
"I am standing in a cathedral while your former lover tells every camera you abandoned your son."
Sloane looked at him. She had heard.
"Did she say that?"
"She didn't have to. Her entrance did the work."
"Have your publicist state that a child required emergency treatment. Say nothing about paternity."
"My publicist resigned ten minutes ago. Your mother has offered me hers."
"Do not let Vivian write your statement."
Celeste laughed once. "You left me at the altar, Rowan. You don't get to manage the sentence I use for it."
The call ended.
Sloane watched the city strobe through the rear windows. "She'll punish Milo to punish you."
"Celeste doesn't know him."
"Neither do you."
The words landed where she aimed them. Rowan put his phone away.
At Blackwood Children's, a team met them behind a screened ambulance bay. Dr. Mara Chen introduced herself while walking. She wore navy scrubs beneath an open white coat and asked questions that allowed no speeches.
"Diagnosis date?"
"Fourteen months ago," Sloane answered.
"Cytogenetics?"
"FLT3 negative, NPM1 positive at diagnosis. Molecular relapse confirmed eight days ago."
"Current absolute neutrophil count?"
"Zero point two yesterday."
Mara nodded to the nurses. "Cultures from two peripheral sites, CBC, metabolic panel, lactate. Cefepime after cultures. Page infectious disease and transplant."
They rolled Milo through isolation doors. Sloane followed until a nurse stopped Rowan and handed him a yellow gown and mask.
"Parents only during line placement."
"I'm his father."
Sloane turned. The narrow hallway put them close, the air sharp with disinfectant. "You don't know that."
"You do."
"I knew the man I slept with. I have no idea who you became."
Mara returned with an electronic tablet. "Mr. Blackwood, legal parentage can wait. Access cannot. Ms. Vale is the sole guardian in the chart. She can authorize your presence."
Rowan looked at Sloane. He wanted to order the door open. The hospital bore his family's name; half its new wing existed because he had signed a check. None of that gave him the right to cross a line around her child.
"May I stay?"
Sloane tied the back of her gown. Her fingers shook once and steadied. "You stay where I can see you. You don't speak for him without asking me."
"Agreed."
Inside, Milo clenched his jaw while a nurse searched for a vein with ultrasound. Rowan stood at the head of the bed. The boy's free hand rose, hovered, then caught two of Rowan's fingers.
"You missed the wedding," Milo murmured.
"So did you."
"I wasn't invited."
"Neither was the important part of me."
Sloane looked down at the blanket. Rowan wished he could see whether the line had hurt her or reached her.
Mara came back after the first antibiotic started. "I reviewed the transplant referral. The record says there are no available paternal relatives and directs the lab to exclude Blackwood family contacts from outreach."
Sloane stepped away from the bed. "I never authorized that."
"Your scanned signature appears on the directive. The upload date is three months before Milo's diagnosis."
"That's impossible."
"It is also outside the normal referral workflow. A transplant coordinator would enter family availability after diagnosis, not before it."
Rowan held out his hand for the tablet. Mara did not give it to him.
"Patient privacy," she said. "Ms. Vale decides who sees the document."
Sloane read it first. Her face lost color. She turned the screen toward Rowan. A neat signature sat below language denying contact with Milo's alleged father. The handwriting resembled hers until the final V, where the pen lifted too early.
"Who can alter this?" Rowan asked.
"Anyone with credentialed access to the health information exchange could upload a document. The audit trail will identify the account, unless someone compromised it. I have preserved the log and notified compliance."
His mother funded the exchange. Celeste's family owned the private clinic named as the submitting provider. The connections arranged themselves with sickening speed.
Mara swabbed Milo, then handed sealed kits to Sloane and Rowan. "The kinship lab will run short tandem repeat testing. Transplant will run high-resolution HLA typing. Different labs, different questions. We photograph the seals and use a courier with chain-of-custody signatures."
The doors opened before Rowan could swab. Vivian entered with Theo Mercer and two hospital administrators.
"This institution cannot accept a stranger's allegation as legal parentage," Vivian said. "Transfer the child to Bellevue and let proper counsel handle the rest."
Milo's fingers tightened around Rowan's.
Theo held out a form. "We can seek an emergency order if necessary, but the fastest route is a voluntary acknowledgment for treatment purposes. It doesn't establish final custody. It tells the hospital Rowan accepts presumed-parent responsibility pending testing."
"You cannot sign that," Vivian said.
Rowan took Theo's pen.
Sloane caught his wrist. Her skin was warm, her grip firm. "This gives you standing to come after me later."
"Then keep a copy and use it against me if I do."
For one suspended second, neither released the other. Her thumb rested over his pulse. He signed beneath it.
Vivian left without another word.
Two hours later, Milo's fever had fallen by half a degree. Mara found Rowan and Sloane on opposite sides of the isolation window. She carried two sealed reports and the expression of a doctor forced to repeat a result she did not trust.
"The HLA lab has not finished," she said. "The identity panel has."
Sloane stood. "Tell us."
Mara set the report between them. "The tested sample excludes Mr. Blackwood as Milo's biological father."