Thirty-three“She can’t stay here. We’ll take her to the Sisters of Mercy.”
Aristide waited for Lani to answer. To say something. Anything.
But she was focusing all her attention on her aunt, gently stroking her cheek and making quiet comforting noises. “We’re here, Misty. You’ll be fine.”
She was holding Misty half-upright on a wrought-iron bench in the garden. The older woman sagged against her.
“Do you think she needs to be in hospital?” Lani’s voice was anxious, tentative.
The Irish Sisters ran one of the more accessible hospitals in the city—the old County and City Hospital on the corner of Stockton and Francisco Streets, where they’d recently taken full control and renamed it St. Mary’s Hospital, after running it on behalf of the city for more than a decade. The order was respect
