[CHAPTER 5]
I shouted so loudly everyone in the hospital lobby turned.
“Emily, get away from the door!”
“I am.”
“Go to the bathroom. Lock yourself inside.”
“But Officer Kim—”
“Where is she?”
“She went downstairs because someone said there was a problem with her car.”
Detective Ruiz was already moving.
She called dispatch.
I heard my mother knock again.
“Emily.”
Her voice was gentle.
That frightened me more than screaming would have.
“Your mother is confused.”
I grabbed Ruiz’s arm.
“She’s there.”
“I know.”
We ran toward the exit.
Thomas stayed beside me.
I wanted to tell him to remain at the hospital.
I couldn’t leave him either.
On the phone, Vivian continued.
“Open the door, darling.”
Emily whispered, “No.”
My mother’s tone hardened.
“Emily.”
My daughter began crying.
“I said no.”
Pride and terror hit me at the same time.
“Good girl,” I whispered. “Stay with me.”
We reached Ruiz’s car.
Sirens were already converging on the apartment.
“Mom?” Emily whispered.
“I’m here.”
“I hear something.”
“What?”
“The lock.”
My blood froze.
Someone was trying a key.
Ruiz drove faster.
Thomas leaned toward the phone.
“Emily.”
She sniffed.
“Thomas?”
“Push something against the bathroom door.”
I looked at him.
He spoke calmly.
“Use the laundry basket. Put towels under it so it won’t slide.”
“How do you know?”
He stared ahead.
“Just do it.”
My stomach twisted.
He had done this before.
Emily followed his instructions.
The apartment door opened.
I heard it through the phone.
Then footsteps.
Slow.
Unhurried.
My mother called, “Emily?”
I wanted to crawl through the phone and tear the walls apart.
“Police are coming,” I told my daughter.
Vivian must have heard.
She stopped.
Then she laughed softly.
“Sarah.”
My skin crawled.
She had found the phone connection.
“Get away from my daughter.”
“She is my granddaughter.”
“You lost the right to say that.”
Thomas’s face tightened.
Vivian heard him breathe.
“Thomas?”
He went pale.
“My sweet boy.”
His hand curled into a fist.
“Don’t call me that.”
“You’re frightened.”
“I’m not going back.”
She sighed.
“You don’t understand what your mother is doing.”
“I understand exactly what you did.”
For once, my mother had no immediate answer.
Then sirens became audible through Emily’s phone.
Vivian cursed.
Footsteps moved quickly away.
Ruiz spoke into the radio.
“Suspect may be exiting rear stairwell.”
We were three minutes away.
It felt like three years.
When we arrived, officers filled the entrance.
Officer Kim stood near the elevator, furious with herself.
Someone had slashed one of her tires and left a note claiming a witness downstairs needed assistance.
Vivian had created the distraction.
Police searched every floor.
She was gone.
A service exit opened onto an alley.
A camera showed her leaving in a gray sweatshirt and baseball cap.
My elegant mother.
Running like a criminal.
I reached Emily.
She unlocked the bathroom only after I said our private family phrase.
“Blueberry pancakes.”
The door opened.
She flew into my arms.
I held her until my knees hurt.
Thomas stood behind me.
Emily reached for him too.
He joined us.
Officer Kim said, “She never got through the bathroom door.”
Thomas looked at the barricade Emily had made.
“You did good.”
“So did you.”
His eyes dropped.
That small sentence mattered.
Detective Ruiz entered holding a clear evidence bag.
Inside was a syringe.
My stomach turned.
“Where did you find that?”
“Bedroom floor.”
“What is it?”
“We don’t know yet.”
Thomas backed away.
I saw terror explode across his face.
“No.”
I went to him.
“What?”
“She used those.”
The room became silent.
“On you?”
He nodded.
“When I got loud.”
My vision blurred red.
“She called it medicine.”
I knelt in front of him.
“You never have to see her again.”
He looked at Ruiz.
“Will she go to jail?”
Ruiz did not give him a false promise.
“We are building the strongest case we can.”
Thomas nodded.
That evening, the preliminary DNA results arrived.
The laboratory had expedited them because of the criminal investigation.
Detective Ruiz sat across from us.
“Thomas is your biological son.”
I laughed.
Then cried.
Then laughed again.
Emily covered her face.
“I knew it.”
Thomas did not move.
He stared at the paper.
“Can I see?”
Ruiz handed it over.
He read the line twice.
Mother-child relationship probability greater than 99.99%.
His mouth trembled.
“So it’s real.”
I moved closer.
“You were real before the paper.”
“But now nobody can say I’m lying.”
The sentence hurt.
I hugged him.
He let me.
Then he hugged back.
Later, child-protection authorities arrived.
The words terrified me.
My mother had spent years building records describing me as unstable.
I feared they would use them against me.
Instead, the investigator sat with me for nearly two hours.
She reviewed the DNA result.
The threats.
The hospital records.
The apartment intrusion.
Then she said, “We are not removing these children.”
I nearly collapsed from relief.
“We will help establish emergency legal custody of Thomas while his death record is corrected.”
“He’s my son.”
“Yes.”
“But legally he’s dead.”
“For the moment.”
Thomas muttered, “That’s weird.”
The investigator almost smiled.
“Very.”
Near midnight, Ruiz received another call.
Gordon Pike, the former hospital systems administrator, had been located.
He lived seventy miles away.
Officers went to question him.
His house was empty.
But they found his car at a bus station.
He was running.
That meant fear.
Fear meant guilt.
Then the lab called about the syringe.
Ruiz’s face tightened as she listened.
“What was in it?” I asked.
“A sedative.”
Thomas looked away.
My hands shook.
“How many times?”
He did not answer.
I did not push.
Ruiz sat down.
“There’s something else.”
Of course there was.
“There were fingerprints on the syringe.”
“My mother’s?”
“No.”
I stared at her.
“Whose?”
“We ran them through the system.”
She hesitated.
Then placed a photograph on the table.
Daniel.
My supposedly dead husband.
The father Thomas said had visited him.
The man I had loved.
The man who knew our son was alive.
His fingerprints were on the syringe my mother brought to take Emily.
May you like
And suddenly I did not know whether Daniel had been another victim.
Or whether he had helped Vivian all along.
