The officer took her purse while she fought him, twisting and screaming. My mother reached for her, but another officer blocked her path.
Detective Harris removed the phone and held it up.
“What is on here, Madison?”
She said nothing.
My mother’s lips barely moved, but I heard her.
“Don’t.”
It was a command.
Madison heard it too. Her whole body stiffened.
Detective Harris glanced at me, then at the doctor. “We need everyone except medical staff and the mother out of this room.”
“No,” my mother said.
It was not panic in her voice anymore.
It was authority.
The kind I remembered from childhood, when she would stand at the top of the stairs and speak one word, and the entire house would shrink around her.
“No,” she repeated. “You don’t get to do this.”
Detective Harris nodded to the officers.
They escorted them out.
Madison screamed my name as they dragged her through the ICU doorway.
