Chapter 3: Ten Minutes to Stop Everything
Mae checked her other pocket.
Then the front of her scrubs.
Then she turned in a slow circle in the narrow supply room as if the phone might have fallen onto a shelf between the gauze rolls and the saline bags.
It hadn't.
"When did you last have it?" Leah whispered.
"Before I moved you.
I set it on the nurses' station counter to check your chart." Mae's jaw tightened.
"Someone took it."
"Or it fell—"
"No." Mae's voice was flat.
"Someone took it."
Leah looked at the door.
The footsteps in the hallway had slowed.
She could hear Doreen's voice again, lower now, giving instructions to someone she couldn't identify.
"Use mine," Leah said.
She reached toward the small table beside the bassinet where she'd left her phone charging that morning.
The charging cable was still there.
Coiled neatly.
Plugged into the wall.
The phone was gone too.
Mae and Leah looked at each other across the bassinet.
"They cleared the room before they started talking," Mae said quietly.
"This was planned down to the hour."
Leah's son made a small sound in his sleep — not quite a cry, just a breath that caught — and both women went still until he settled again.
"There's a landline," Mae said.
"Supply room B, two doors down.
Old hospital infrastructure.
It's not on the main system."
"Can you get there without being seen?"
"Not from this side of the hall." Mae looked at the ceiling, thinking.
"But there's a connecting door through the linen storage.
It hasn't been used in months.
The latch sticks."
"Then go."
"I can't leave you alone."
"You have to." Leah straightened against the shelving.
Her incision pulled with the movement and she pressed one hand flat against it.
"Go.
I'll keep him quiet."
Mae hesitated for exactly two seconds.
Then she moved to the back wall of the supply room, where a narrow door sat flush with the shelving unit.
She worked the latch with both hands.
It resisted.
She leaned her shoulder into it.
The door gave with a sound like a breath being released.
Mae slipped through without looking back.
Leah was alone with her son and the voices on the other side of the wall.
"—can't delay past four o'clock," Doreen was saying.
"The attending goes off shift at four-fifteen and the evening staff won't cooperate."
"I know, Mom."
"Do you?" A pause.
"Because you've known for eight months that this woman was wrong for you, and you've done nothing.
I've had to arrange everything.
Again."
Nathan said something too quiet to hear.
"I don't want to hear about your feelings, Nathan.
I want to hear that you've signed what I gave you."
Leah pressed her hand over her mouth.
Eight months.
Doreen had been planning this since before Leah's third trimester.
Since before the low-lying placenta, before Silver Birch, before Dr.
Rusk had recommended Briar Glen.
All of it — the clinic, the hospital, the doctor — had been selected in advance.
Not for Leah's safety.
For access.
Her son opened his eyes.
He looked up at her with the unfocused, ancient calm of a newborn who had not yet learned that the world could be dangerous.
Leah bent over the bassinet and let him wrap one fist around her finger.
"I've got you," she whispered.
"I promise."
From two doors down, she heard a faint sound.
A phone being lifted from a cradle.
Then silence.
Then Doreen's voice, sharp and sudden: "Did you hear that?"
Footsteps.
Moving toward the linen storage.
Leah looked at the connecting door Mae had left slightly open.
If someone checked that room, they would see the light.
They would find the door.
They would find her.
She reached out and pulled the bassinet as far from the connecting door as the narrow space allowed.
Then she pressed herself into the corner behind a tall shelving unit and waited.
May you like
The footsteps stopped outside the linen storage door.
The handle turned.
