Chapter 4 - SOMEONE CAME FOR GRACE
The orderly did not look at us.
That was what made Detective Cole move.
A normal employee would have glanced toward the open door, the detective with his hand near his weapon, or Sarah standing beside my bed with a bandaged arm.
The man pushing the bassinet kept his eyes on the floor and turned toward the neonatal unit.
Cole stepped into the hallway.
"Sir."
The orderly kept walking.
"Stop where you are."
The bassinet wheels squeaked once.
Then the man ran.
Everything happened at the speed of panic.
Cole shouted.
Sarah reached for the emergency call button.
I tore the monitoring clip from my finger and tried to get out of bed.
Pain folded me in half before my feet reached the floor.
"Grace."
Sarah pushed me back.
"Stay here."
"My baby."
"I'm going."
"No."
She looked at me as if I had lost my mind.
"You can barely stand."
"And you were shot at last night."
"It grazed me."
"That does not make you bulletproof."
Another alarm began screaming somewhere down the corridor.
The neonatal unit doors slammed shut automatically.
A nurse ran past our room.
Then another.
I grabbed Sarah's wrist.
"Do not leave me."
She stopped.
The admission cost both of us something.
I had spent weeks dreaming of someone opening the cage.
Now the idea of my sister stepping into a hallway without me made my chest seize.
Sarah climbed onto the edge of the bed and wrapped one arm around me.
"I'm here."
We listened.
Running footsteps.
A shouted command.
A crash.
Then silence.
The silence lasted too long.
Cole returned five minutes later with two security officers.
His breathing was controlled, but his shirt collar had been torn.
"Where is he?" Sarah demanded.
"Gone."
"What do you mean, gone?"
"He used the stairwell."
"There are cameras."
"He knew where they were."
My blood turned cold.
"Grace?"
"Safe."
The word hit me so hard I started crying.
Cole came closer.
"He never reached the neonatal doors."
Sarah did not relax.
"What was the bassinet for?"
Cole looked toward the hall.
"That is what concerns me."
He held up a clear plastic hospital pouch.
Inside was a syringe, an employee access card, a folded surgical cap, and a small silver charm shaped like a cross.
I knew the charm.
I had seen it every month of my pregnancy.
Dr. Nathan Vance, my obstetrician, wore an identical charm on a leather cord around his wrist.
I stared at it.
"Where did you find that?"
"In the bassinet."
Sarah followed my gaze.
"You recognize it."
"My doctor has one."
Cole's eyes sharpened.
"Name?"
"Nathan Vance."
He took out his phone.
"Did he deliver Grace?"
"No."
I realized something else.
"He was supposed to."
Sarah looked at me.
"What?"
"He told Marcus he was on call this week."
I searched my memory.
"Marcus made a joke about it at my last appointment."
"What joke?" Cole asked.
I hated how clearly I could still hear my husband's voice.
"He said, 'Good, at least if Anna gets dramatic, Nate knows how to shut her up.'"
Sarah went pale.
Cole did not write that down.
He simply stared at me.
"Did Dr. Vance laugh?"
"Yes."
The answer made the room colder.
Cole spoke to one of the officers.
"Find Vance now."
The officer left.
I looked through the window again.
"Bring Grace to me."
Cole hesitated.
"I want my daughter in this room."
"She is still receiving respiratory support."
"Then move me to her."
"Anna."
"No."
The word came out harder than I intended.
"I spent three weeks being told where I could sit, when I could drink, when I could speak, and whether I was allowed to touch my own stomach."
I pulled the blanket tighter around my waist.
"I am done being managed."
Cole nodded slowly.
"I understand."
"No, you don't."
He accepted that too.
A nurse arrived with a wheelchair ten minutes later.
They did not let me hold Grace because she was connected to too many lines, but they took me into the neonatal unit and positioned me beside her incubator.
She was impossibly small.
A clear tube rested beneath her nose.
Tiny sensors covered her chest.
Her hands opened and closed as if she were testing the world.
I placed two fingers through the access port and touched her palm.
She closed her hand around me.
That was the moment I stopped feeling like a woman who had survived something.
I became someone who still had something to lose.
Sarah stood behind me.
"She has your stubbornness."
"She is one day old."
"Exactly."
I almost smiled.
While the neonatal unit stabilized after the blackout, an elderly nurse named Ruth remained beside Grace even after her shift ended.
She had worked at St. Catherine for thirty-seven years.
When I mentioned Mara Ellison's name later, Ruth's hands stopped over the supply drawer.
"You know that name?" I asked.
She looked toward the door.
"Why?"
"Because she delivered here six years ago."
Ruth's expression became guarded.
"Many women deliver here."
"Not many disappear from their records."
She closed the drawer.
"I should get the charge nurse."
I caught her sleeve.
"Please."
She looked at my hand, then at Grace.
"I remember a woman crying in recovery that her baby was alive."
My breath stopped.
"What did staff say?"
"That medication made her confused."
"Who said that?"
"Dr. Vance."
Ruth's voice dropped.
"And Mrs. Cross."
"Evelyn was there?"
"I did not know her name then."
"I knew her later because her foundation paid for this unit."
Ruth stared at Grace's monitor.
"The mother kept asking why she heard a baby."
"A nurse was told to increase her sedative."
"Did you?"
"No."
"Who did?"
"I do not know."
Ruth looked ashamed.
"I went home."
The sentence landed heavily.
So many people in this story had gone home while something terrible continued in another room.
Ruth squeezed my hand once.
"I have thought about her for six years."
"Then remember everything now."
She nodded.
That evening, she gave Cole a formal statement.
Then a familiar voice came from the other side of the unit.
"Anna?"
Dr. Nathan Vance stood in the doorway.
He wore a white coat over pale green scrubs.
A leather cord circled his wrist.
The silver cross was missing.
Cole stepped between us.
Vance stopped.
"What is going on?"
Cole held up the evidence pouch.
"Lose something?"
Vance looked at the charm.
His face did not change.
"That is sold in the hospital gift shop."
"Is that where you bought yours?"
"My wife gave it to me."
"Where is it?"
Vance glanced at his wrist as if noticing the absence for the first time.
"I have no idea."
Sarah laughed without humor.
"That is convenient."
Vance ignored her and looked at me.
"I heard what happened at the house."
"Did you?"
"I am so sorry."
"Are you?"
His expression softened in the way it always had during appointments.
"You have been through an extreme trauma."
The phrase sounded rehearsed.
"Your nervous system is going to search for threats everywhere."
Cole's eyes narrowed.
Vance continued.
"That is normal after prolonged confinement."
I looked at the badge clipped to his coat.
His photograph faced outward.
The woman in Sarah's mysterious image had worn her badge backward.
"You were in my basement."
Vance froze.
Only for a fraction of a second.
Then he smiled sadly.
"Anna, I have never been in your basement."
"We have a picture."
That came from Sarah.
Vance looked at her.
"A picture of me?"
"No."
His shoulders relaxed.
"A person in hospital scrubs is not evidence."
Cole stepped closer.
"You sound unusually certain for a man who has not seen the image."
Vance's smile disappeared.
Before he could answer, Cole's phone rang.
The detective glanced at the screen and walked several feet away.
I watched his face while he listened.
Something was wrong.
Very wrong.
"Where?" he asked.
He listened again.
"When?"
Then he turned toward us.
"Dr. Vance, do not leave this unit."
Vance lifted his hands.
"I am on shift."
"You are staying here."
Cole looked at Sarah.
"Come with me."
"No," I said.
He lowered his voice.
"I need to speak to her privately."
Sarah squeezed my shoulder.
"I'll be right outside."
They stepped into the corridor.
Through the glass wall, I could see Cole talking.
I could not hear him.
But I saw Sarah's face collapse.
She pressed one hand over her mouth.
Then she looked back at me.
I knew before she returned that whatever Cole had learned was connected to us.
"What happened?"
Sarah sat beside my wheelchair.
Her eyes were wet.
"The old phone was found."
Relief came too quickly.
"Where?"
She looked at Grace.
Then back at me.
"In Maya's car."
"The paramedic?"
Sarah nodded.
"Then she took it."
"No."
Her voice broke.
"Maya was in the car too."
I stared at her.
"What do you mean?"
"She was unconscious."
I gripped the wheelchair arm.
"Is she alive?"
"Yes."
"For now."
The words made me shake.
Sarah continued.
"Someone left her in the hospital parking garage with the phone on her chest."
I looked at Dr. Vance.
He was speaking quietly to a nurse as if none of this involved him.
"Was anything else there?"
Sarah nodded.
"A note."
"What did it say?"
She did not want to tell me.
I could see it.
"Sarah."
Her voice dropped to a whisper.
"It said, 'The cage was never the plan.'"
May you like
I looked down at Grace's tiny hand wrapped around my finger.
Then every monitor in the neonatal unit went black at once.
