He paused again and took a deep breath. “And that’s about the time her water broke. I mean it was like a flood. The next thing I knew, she was soaked and so was I. By then other people had turned up. The clerk from the gas station came out and started putting up flares because we were both still in the middle of the road. Somebody else called for an aid car and notified the cops. I don’t know how long it took for the ambulance to get to us. It felt like forever.”

“She spoke to you, then?” Sister Anselm asked.

David nodded.

“Did she say anything about who she was—what her name is or where she’s from?”

“I asked what her name was. She tried to tell me, but she was having a hard time talking. It sounded like something that started with an E—Edith maybe? She didn’t mention a last name. There was a lot of confusion when the EMTs got there. For a while, they must have thought I was her husband. That’s why, when they cut her hair off so they could deal with the wound on the back of her head, they gave me these.”

An athletic bag was stationed at his feet. He reached down into it and pulled out a clear Ziploc plastic bag. When he handed it over to Sister Anselm, she saw it contained long coils of braided and blood-soaked blond hair. The braids had been clipped off close to the scalp, but whoever had cut them off had first secured the top of each braid with a rubber band just below the cut line.

As Sister Anselm studied the braids, she was thrown back in time, thinking of another girl, years earlier, one who had also worn her long blond hair in braids just like this. Drawing a deep breath and forcing the memory aside, she turned back to the distraught young man seated next to her.

“She was unconscious by the time they cut off her braids?” Sister Anselm asked.

David nodded.

“Presumably, then,” Sister Anselm concluded, “the EMT was an Indian.”

David gave her a puzzled look. “I’m pretty sure she was, but how did you know that?”

“This is probably waist-long hair when it isn’t braided,” Sister Anselm explained. “When Indians used to be shipped off to boarding schools, the matrons cut their hair off first thing, whether they wanted it cut or not. Keeping the victim’s hair from being lost was an act of kindness on the EMT’s part.”

“It’s covered with blood,” David pointed out. “I probably should have given it to the cops when they showed up, but they started giving me the third degree, and I forgot all about it. The cops didn’t get there until after the ambulance had pulled away. They took the position initially that I was at fault—that I was someone who knew the girl and had run her down deliberately. Either that, or else I was drunk as a skunk. They gave me a Breathalyzer and were blown away when they saw the results, because I don’t drink, not at all, except for too much coffee.

“Anyway, after hassling me for the better part of two hours, they finally let me go, but they impounded my car. They said that since this might turn into a fatality, they had to confiscate my vehicle until their investigation was complete. There was no way I could go on up to Vermillion Cliffs to meet my friends without my car, so I caught a ride with some of the people who had stopped to help and came here.”

“To the hospital?”

He nodded.

“There’s more than one hospital here in town. How did you know which one?”

“The EMT who gave me the braids told me. At the time, I think she still thought I was the husband.”

“And you came here because?”

David shrugged and rubbed his eyes, bleary with fatigue. “Because I needed to know if she and the baby were okay. It wasn’t my fault, but still, I’m the one who hit them. The problem is, nobody here will tell me anything. They asked me if I was her next of kin. When I told them no, they said there was some law that made it impossible for them to give out any information.”

“HIPAA,” Sister Anselm murmured.

“What?”

“That’s the name of the law,” she explained. “It’s called the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. One of the requirements prevents health-care providers from giving out a patient’s information to anyone other than an individual the patient has designated to receive it.”

“So being here is pretty much useless,” David said despairingly, “because they’re not going to tell me anything anyway.” He paused. “She’s just a kid, Sister, probably still in high school. What was she doing out there on her own, alone in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere? And what about the jerk who knocked her up? Where’s he? The father must be some kind of a bad guy, because that’s what she said to me out there on the road. She begged me to keep anyone from taking either her or her baby back—wherever the hell back is!”

Sister Anselm studied the distraught young man and heard the outrage in his voice. As a patient advocate, she had taken a vow of confidentiality—one that had come long before the mid-1990s when someone in Washington, DC, had made HIPAA the law of the land. But this young man, related or not, was the only one here—the only one taking responsibility for and caring about what had happened. Depending on the seriousness of Jane Doe’s injuries, for now and perhaps for the rest of her young life, David Upton was the closest thing she had to a next of kin. Sister Anselm was still holding the braids.

“Now,” she asked, “do you want these back or should I put them with the rest of her effects?”

“With her effects, of course,” he agreed at once. “I’m sure they shouldn’t have been given to me in the first place.”

“I believe that, for whatever reason, they were given to exactly the right person. Now then, Mr. Upton,” Sister Anselm said, standing up, “you should go home. Try to get some rest. How far do you live from here?”

“Not far, just a few blocks off campus. I can walk. But what if something bad happens?” David asked. “What if she doesn’t make it? I won’t even know.”

“Give me your phone number,” Sister Anselm said, pulling her own iPhone out of her pocket. “I promise, if her condition changes, I’ll keep you apprised of what’s going on.”

“But I already told you,” David countered. “I’m not . . . you know . . . any kind of relative.”

“You are now,” Sister Anselm said with a smile as she finished keying his number into her phone. “Because I said so.”

“You can do that? Didn’t you just say that giving me any information about her is against the law?”

“Yes, that is what I said,” Sister Anselm conceded, “but I can also give you the information if I deem it necessary. As of this moment and as far as I’m concerned, you are my patients’ only known next of kin. That goes for both of them.”

David nodded. “Thank you,” he said, “although I’m not sure how you can get away with it.”

Sister Anselm patted the gold crucifix that dangled from the gold chain around her neck. “You might say, Mr. Upton,” she told him with a conspiratorial wink, “that I’ve been granted a waiver in that regard by someone much higher up the chain of command.”

10

At half past ten the next morning, Ali stumbled into the kitchen in search of her first cup of coffee. She had obviously slept too late to suit Bella, who was already curled up in a ball on the small round dog bed next to the kitchen counter near where Leland stood rolling out rounds of dough for pasties. He smiled a good morning and then nodded in the direction of Ali’s cell phone.

“When I came into the house this morning and realized that Sister Anselm had decamped overnight,” he said, “it occurred to me that you’d probably had a less than restful night. I took the liberty of coming into your room, liberating your cell phone from its charger, turning off the ringer on your bedside phone, and taking Bella along with me.”