Chapter 9 - THE DOCTOR ON MARCUS’S PAYROLL
The hospital instructions led back to Dr. Warren Pike.
Marcus’s psychiatrist.
He had never treated me.
That didn’t stop him from writing a preliminary assessment.
Dana obtained it through discovery.
The document described me as emotionally unstable, paranoid, and potentially dangerous postpartum.
I had never met the man.
Yet he recommended immediate psychiatric observation after I gave birth.
Meaning they could separate me from my baby.
I read the report twice.
Then handed it to Dana.
“He wrote this without examining me.”
“Yes.”
“Is that legal?”
“Not the way he did it.”
“What happens now?”
“We destroy him with his own paperwork.”
Dana subpoenaed Pike’s communications with Marcus.
His attorneys objected.
The new judge overruled them.
Not my father.
Judge Margaret Chen.
Sharp.
Unimpressed.
Impossible to charm.
Marcus tried anyway.
He appeared at the next hearing wearing a navy suit and his wounded-husband expression.
Judge Chen looked at him for less than ten seconds.
“Mr. Hale, sit down.”
He sat.
Dana presented the video of Vanessa attacking me.
Then Pike’s report.
Then the audio recording.
Gregory Sloan objected repeatedly.
Judge Chen overruled him repeatedly.
Finally she asked Marcus one question.
“Did you instruct Dr. Pike to evaluate your wife?”
Marcus smiled faintly.
“I expressed concern.”
“Did he meet her?”
“No.”
“Interview her?”
“No.”
“Review her medical file with permission?”
Marcus stopped smiling.
“I don’t know.”
Judge Chen leaned back.
“I do.”
She held up a document.
“He did not.”
The hearing lasted three hours.
At the end, Judge Chen issued an emergency protective order.
Marcus could not contact me.
Could not come within five hundred feet.
Could not interfere with my medical care.
And could not make decisions regarding the baby before further order.
For the first time, I watched Marcus lose something he could not buy back instantly.
Control.
Outside court, reporters surrounded him.
“Mr. Hale, did you arrange an assault on your wife?”
“Did you pay a psychiatrist?”
“What do you know about Claire Donnelly?”
Marcus walked silently.
Then he saw me.
Police stood between us.
He stopped.
For one second the cameras disappeared.
We were husband and wife again.
He looked at my stomach.
Then at me.
And smiled.
Tiny.
Private.
Terrifying.
His lips moved.
“You still don’t know.”
Dana saw it.
“What did he say?”
“I don’t know.”
That night, I woke to pain.
Sharp.
Rhythmic.
Too early.
My father drove me to the hospital.
Contractions.
Stress.
The doctors tried to stop labor.
For hours.
At 3:12 a.m., my nurse entered with a strange expression.
“What?”
I asked.
“There’s a man downstairs claiming to be your husband.”
My father stood.
“He has a protective order.”
“I know.”
The nurse swallowed.
“He’s not trying to come up.”
“Then what does he want?”
She looked at me.
“He brought a court order.”
Dana grabbed her phone.
“What order?”
The nurse answered,
“For emergency custody of the baby immediately after birth.”
My father stared at me.
“That’s impossible.”
But it wasn’t.
The order had been signed.
May you like
By Judge Robert Mills.
One of the names on Marcus’s secret recording list.
