“Miro!”
It took me a second. “Min?” It was her, but I’d never heard that exact tremor in her voice before in my life. It was almost scary.
“I need help.”
My head cleared instantly. “What’s wrong?”
“Ned has lost his fuckin’ mind.”
“Ned?” I wasn’t sure I was understanding her. “Janet’s Ned?”
“Yes, Janet’s Ned.”
“What happened?”
“He checked Janet into the hospital yesterday and is trying to have her committed.”
I sat up straight. “But she just had a baby.”
“What does that have to do with what I’m telling you?”
I had no earthly idea, but it had made sense in my head.
A month ago Janet had delivered her first child. She was still out on maternity leave. Ian and I were supposed to go on our honeymoon, but we agreed we’d skip that and use our vacation for the birth of the baby instead. But I had wanted to wait until Cody, Janet’s son, was at least three months old so he wasn’t so boneless. I had held Sajani when she was a month old, and it freaked me out.
“Honey, I need you to wake up because I need you to save Janet.”
“Okay, go back,” I demanded, throwing off the covers, getting out of bed.
“It sounds like Ned’s mother got him going because Janet didn’t want to leave the baby with her. She convinced him that Janet is suffering from postpartum depression and suggested she go with Ned to a spa and rest.”
“There’s more, tell me more.”
“As I understand it, Janet and Ned were in the bedroom fighting about going out. Ned wanted to; Janet wanted to stay home with the baby, but when he tried to take Cody out of Janet’s arms to put him back into the crib, she tightened her hold, and Ned pulled at the same time,” she sighed. “In the process of this teeny tug-of-war, Cody fell, and as Janet was crying, Ned’s mother, who was also there, called the police.”
“The police?” I rasped, not believing how quickly something so innocent had escalated.
“Yeah. So when the police got there, Ned’s mother said that Janet was endangering her child. When they asked Ned for confirmation, he said that yes, she was, and had purposely dropped the baby. He blamed postpartum depression, and the cops took Janet to the hospital, but Ned had her transferred immediately to The Meadows Treatment Facility, which is where I need you to go spring her from this morning.”
“Wait.”
“Yes?” she said, and I could hear the tension and exasperation in her voice, like she didn’t want to explain things to me, she just wanted me to listen.
“Janet’s not some dying calf in a thunderstorm, right? I mean she’s strong and gutsy and—there’s no way she doesn’t stick up for herself in that situation and get the cops to listen to her,” I contended, knowing Janet, certain she would have argued, had a rebuttal for Ned’s allegation to defend her actions. “She would have told them that it was his fault, that he was the one trying to grab the baby away from her.”
“Normally, yes, I agree. I know she would have been able to handle this and stop it from blowing up, but this time she lost it.”
“Why?”
Sharp exhale of breath. “I don’t know. I think maybe she must have gotten scared, because it said on the police report that she started screaming and threatening Ned and his mother, and then she threw her cell phone at him while the police were right there.”
Hurling the phone at Ned was bad enough, but the fact there was an infant in the house compounded it. The big-picture concern would be that Janet was a danger to herself and others. Once the police made that determination, that would have been all they needed to take her into custody and remove her from her home.
I could feel my heart starting to pound. “And?”
“And that’s it.”
I couldn’t breathe. “When Cody fell—how—”
“He fell probably three feet onto the bed.”
It took me a moment. “I’m sorry?”
“No, you heard me right.”
“He fell onto the bed?” I could barely believe what I was hearing, and I was getting angrier by the second.
“Yeah.”
“Onto the bed?” I was flabbergasted. “Are you kidding?”
“I wish I was.”
“But—”
“I know. Believe me, I know.”
“So Cody’s fine.”
“Totally fine, yes.”
“Then all this is because of Ned’s mother.”
“And Ned,” Min snapped, the anger seeping through her words. “Don’t forget him. But yes, his mother was there, and—well—it escalated from bad to worse.”
“No shit. So what now?”
“Now you go get her skinny ass out.”
“How?”
“Well, as you know, I don’t practice law in DC, but I have a colleague there, and he filed a restraining order for me on Janet’s behalf against Ned and his mother.”
“Just tell me what I need to do.”
“I need you to go there, get her out of the hospital, and go with her so she can take custody of Cody.”