Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
The hospital corridor was empty.
I knew this hallway. It was the third floor of Augusta General, the maternity ward where I’d done my OB rotation a lifetime ago.
Same mint-green walls, same scuffed linoleum, same fluorescent lights buzzing overhead with that faint flicker that always made the shadows jump.
But it was wrong the way things are wrong in dreams. Too quiet.
Too empty. The nurses’ station dark and unmanned, the whiteboard wiped clean.
My baby was crying.
The sound echoed off the walls, bouncing and distorting until I couldn’t tell which direction it was coming from. But I knew. Room 3012, end of the hall. I could see the door from where I stood. Thirty feet, maybe less. Close enough to read the number on the placard.
I started running.
The floor was slick under my bare feet. I was wearing scrubs, and my hands were bare, no gloves, no ring, nothing.
Just skin. I pumped my arms and drove my legs and the door didn’t get any closer.
The hallway stretched ahead of me, the linoleum unfurling like a tongue, and the faster I ran the farther the door pulled away.
The crying got louder.
Not the patient, waiting cry of a hungry baby. This was different. This was the sharp, hitching wail of an infant in distress. It was a cry that activates something primal in your chest, something deeper than thought, something that says move faster.
“I’m coming,” I said, and my voice sounded strange, flat and echoless, swallowed by the empty corridor. “I’m right here.”
I ran harder. My lungs burned. My feet slapped the linoleum and I could hear my own breathing, ragged and desperate, and the door was still thirty feet away.
Still exactly thirty feet away. I could see the handle, brushed steel, could see the thin strip of light under the door, could see the shadow of movement on the other side.
Someone was in the room with her.
I could see it through the narrow window in the door—a shape, a figure, moving around the bassinet. Not rushing. Not panicked. Calm. Deliberate. The way people moved when they had authority. When they belonged.
“Stop!” I screamed. The word came out muffled, like screaming into a pillow. My legs were heavy now, thick and clumsy, every stride like pushing through water. “Don’t touch her! Get away from her!”
The figure didn’t turn. Didn’t acknowledge me. Just continued moving with that terrible, unhurried calm while my daughter screamed and I couldn’t close the distance.
Still close, but so far away. The numbers on the door were clear as day and I could not reach them.
I threw myself forward, and the floor shifted, went soft, went wrong. My feet tangled. I went down hard, palms slapping the linoleum, knees cracking against the floor. The pain was real, sharp and bright, the kind of pain that doesn’t happen in dreams.
The crying stopped.
And I knew.
Not the way I knew things as a coroner. Clinical, detached, the careful logic of evidence and examination.
This was different. This was deeper. A knowledge that lived somewhere beneath my ribs, beneath my training, in a part of me I hadn’t known existed until ten weeks ago.
The same part that had made my hand go to my stomach before I’d even taken the test. The same part that woke me in the night to check on something that didn’t even have a heartbeat yet.
A mother knows.
Something was wrong. Something was already done. And I was too late.
I scrambled to my feet and the hallway was gone. I was at the door. My hand was on the handle, cold steel under my palm, and I pushed.
It didn’t move.
I pushed harder. Threw my shoulder into it. Beat my fist against it until my hand throbbed. The door was locked and my baby was on the other side and the silence was absolute and I could not get in.
I pressed my face to the window.
The room was empty. Clean white sheets on the bed. Bassinet in the corner, neatly made.
No figure. No baby. No sign that anyone had ever been there at all.
Just an empty room, scrubbed clean, as if she’d never existed.
* * *
I came awake with a gasp that felt like surfacing from deep water.
Our bedroom. Gray light through the glass wall. The ceiling fan turning above us, steady and slow. Jack’s arm across my waist, his breathing deep and even against the back of my neck.
I pressed my hand to my chest and felt my heart slamming against my ribs. The sheets were damp under me. Sweat, not the cold linoleum of a hospital floor. And my hands were shaking.
Actually shaking, a fine tremor I couldn’t control.
Not real. Not real. None of it was real.
My hand went to my stomach. Flat. Warm. Still there. Still mine.
I lay very still and concentrated on breathing.
In through my nose, slow. Out through my mouth, slower.
The way you coached someone through shock.
The way I’d coached Loretta Washington six hours ago, though she’d had real grief and I only had the phantom kind.
The kind your brain manufactured from fear and hormones and a long day spent with the dead.
A mother knows.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Loretta had known something was wrong before we’d said a word. Had felt it, she said. In her chest. In the place where her son had always lived.
I wasn’t a mother yet. But I’d felt it in the dream, that annihilating terror, that willingness to break down doors and shatter bone and crawl on bleeding hands if it meant getting to her in time.
And the worst part wasn’t the fear. The worst part was the helplessness.
The hallway that wouldn’t end. The door that wouldn’t open.
All of my training, all of my strength, all of my stubborn, relentless will… and none of it had been enough.
It was just a dream.
I pressed my palm harder against my stomach. Jack shifted behind me, murmured something into my hair, settled deeper into sleep.
I didn’t go back to sleep. I lay there in the gray half light with my hand on my stomach and my eyes wide open, listening to Jack breathe, listening to the fan, listening for a sound that wasn’t there, a small, thin cry from down the hall, from a room that didn’t exist yet, from a daughter I hadn’t met.
The house was quiet. Everything was fine.
* * *
Jack stirred behind me, his arm tightening, pulling me closer.
“You’re thinking too loud,” he murmured against my hair.
“I’m not thinking anything.”
“Liar.” He kissed the back of my neck, lazy and warm. “How long have you been awake?”
Too long. “A few minutes.”
His hand spread across my stomach, casual, possessive—and my breath caught.
He couldn’t know. It was just the way he held me, the way he always held me, one arm around my waist, hand resting wherever it landed.
But after the dream, the weight of his palm against that small, flat space felt like the only thing keeping me anchored to the real world.
I laced my fingers through his and held on.
“Hey.” His voice changed—still rough with sleep but alert now, reading me the way he always could. “You okay?”
“Fine. Just didn’t sleep great.”
He was quiet for a beat. I could feel him deciding whether to push. “Bad dream?”
“I don’t really remember it,” I lied. “Just one of those nights.”
He pressed his lips to my shoulder and let it go. That was one of the things I loved most about Jack. He knew when to hold on and when to leave a door open without walking through it.
“What time is it?” he asked.
I glanced at the clock. “Almost six thirty.”
He groaned but didn’t let go. “Daniels should have something for me by now. She said she’d email the prints report first thing.”
“Then you should probably check your email.”
“Probably.” But he didn’t move. Just held me, his breath warm against my skin, his hand still laced with mine over my stomach. “Five more minutes.”
I closed my eyes and let myself have it—five minutes of Jack’s warmth, Jack’s heartbeat against my back, Jack’s hand over the place where our daughter was growing. Five minutes where nothing was wrong and no one was crying and every door in the house opened exactly the way it was supposed to.
“Okay,” I said quietly. “Five more minutes.”
* * *
I showered quickly, letting the hot water beat the last of the sleep from my muscles.
We had interviews today—the gym, the construction site— which meant looking professional.
I dried my hair and left it down, so it hung chin length.
I’d been thinking of getting bangs, which on some psychological level probably represented the upheaval in my life, but I’d never been one to live my life based on psychology. That was more Jack’s area of expertise.
I didn’t linger in front of the closet. I never saw the point. I pulled on black trousers—slim cut, comfortable enough to move in—and paired them with a silk shell in deep crimson that made me feel like I meant business. I added a black blazer and slid my feet into black ballet flats.
I gave my reflection a once-over. Good enough. I could only assume my good genes had come from my birth mother. The woman I’d been stolen from had been French, which meant I could get away with nothing but moisturizer and my bone structure on most days. Today was one of those days.
My wedding ring caught the light as I reached for my bag. It was the only jewelry I ever wore, and the only jewelry I needed. Losing things in a body cavity while doing an autopsy was never fun, so I’d learned early on to limit myself in the bling department.
Jack was already in the kitchen when I came down. He was dressed in black DBUs and a black polo, his duty belt and badge firmly secured at his waist.
The smell of coffee filled the kitchen. Doug was slumped at the table with a bowl of cereal, his phone propped against the milk carton, some video playing at low volume.
His eyes were red rimmed, his hair a disaster.
Oscar was wedged under his chair, chin on his paws, watching us with the lazy contentment of a dog who’d already been fed.