5. The Cages They Built
The legal fallout was immediate, spectacular, and utterly devastating.
A month after the incident, while our daughter was finally beginning to breathe on her own without the ventilator, the first massive blow landed on the perpetrators.
I was sitting in the quiet, dim waiting room of the NICU, holding a lukewarm cup of coffee, when Aaron’s phone buzzed loudly in his pocket. He looked at the caller ID, his jaw tightening.
He didn’t walk away to take it. He sat down next to me, hit accept, and put the call on speakerphone, setting the device on the small table between us.
“Aaron! Please, you have to answer me!” my mother’s voice shrieked through the speaker. The arrogant, dismissive matriarch who had commanded the living room was completely gone. She sounded absolutely frantic, her voice raw with hysterical, unadulterated panic.
“Aaron, please, you have to talk to Emily! You have to stop these lawyers!” she wailed, sobbing audibly into the phone. “The bank just called me! Her lawyers filed an injunction and froze all of my personal bank accounts! The homeowner’s insurance company is refusing to settle the claim or provide me with legal defense counsel because of the active, ongoing criminal investigation against Nicole and Dylan!”
She paused, gasping for air, the sheer magnitude of her ruin crashing down on her.
