A nurse behind the central desk was on the phone.
Another hurried past with medication.
Daniel saw signs.
ICU East.
Observation.
Rooms 810–829.
He walked.
His body had begun moving without consulting the rest of him.
He had been awake since 5:30 that morning.
Had eaten half a vending-machine sandwich.
Had consumed enough coffee to make his hands unsteady even before fear.
Room numbers blurred.
Then a glass door partly open.
A nurse pushing an equipment cart said, “She was transferred down there, sir.”
Daniel looked where she gestured.
Or thought he did.
“Thank you.”
He reached a private room.
The door read 812.
Daniel’s exhausted mind saw 821.
Or perhaps it saw only an eight, a two, and a one and rearranged them into what he needed.
Inside, the lights were low.
A woman lay in the bed.
Blonde hair spread across the pillow.
Oxygen cannula beneath her nose.
White blanket to her chest.
Monitor glowing beside her.
Daniel stopped in the doorway.
Emma’s hair was light brown, not blonde.
Emma was nine.
The person in the bed was clearly an adult.
Under ordinary circumstances, Daniel would have recognized the mistake instantly.
But ordinary circumstances had ended six hours earlier.
Fear had compressed his world until the bed itself became the only thing he saw.
Patient.
Blanket.
Closed eyes.
Machines.
A person lying terribly still.
He stepped inside.
“Emma?”
No response.
He moved closer.
Then the face became clearer.
Daniel stopped.
Not Emma.
Of course not Emma.
His body understood before his mind did.
He stood frozen beside the bed, ashamed of himself.
“Oh God.”
The woman did not move.
Daniel backed away.
“I’m sorry.”
He turned toward the door.
Then he noticed something.
No flowers except a white arrangement untouched on the side table.
No handbag.
No jacket.
No family photographs except one small card facedown near the vase.
No overnight visitor stretched across the chair.
No one.
The woman breathed because a machine helped measure every breath, but the room otherwise carried the silence of a place no one expected conversation.
Daniel should have left.
Instead he looked at the violin case.
Then at her.
He thought about Emma asking for her mother’s song.
He thought about the hospital room he was supposed to be in.
He thought about the twenty yards separating one frightened person from another.
Maybe thirty.
Daniel set the violin case on the chair.
“I’m in the wrong room.”
The woman remained still.
“Obviously.”
He laughed weakly at himself.
“You’re not Emma.”
Nothing.
He opened the case.
The smell of old wood and rosin rose immediately.
It nearly knocked him backward emotionally.
Claire.
College apartment.
Summer windows open.
Her bare feet on cheap carpet.
Emma at two curled between them during a storm.
Daniel ran his thumb across the instrument’s edge.
“I haven't played this since my wife died.”
His voice sounded strange in the quiet room.
“I was taking it to my daughter.”
He glanced toward the unconscious woman.
“This is insane.”
Still, he lifted the violin.
Positioned it beneath his jaw.
His fingers remembered more than he expected.
The first note trembled.
The second was cleaner.
By the fourth, the lullaby found him.
Soft.
Simple.
Four descending phrases.