Chapter 8 - The Lockdown of Room 412
The room seemed to implode.
Daniel stood completely immobilized, as if a lightning bolt had struck the center of his chest. His arms hung limply at his sides, his breathing turning into shallow, jagged wheezes. The reality of what Dr. Harrison had just spoken crashed through his arrogance like an artillery shell tearing through drywall.
Your cryopreserved material.
Those babies are yours.
One hundred percent.
He turned his head slowly, like a rusted automaton, his eyes wide and bloodshot, looking at the three tiny acrylic cribs. The three swaddled infants. His sons. His daughter. The children he had just called bastards. The children he had just threatened to throw into state foster care.
Beside him, Julianna made her move.
She didn't speak. She didn't apologize. With a frantic, feral gasp, she spun on her stiletto heels, clutching her Hermès bag to her chest, and bolted toward the open doorway of Room 412.
"Stop her!" Dr. Harrison roared.
The doctor didn't wait for the nurses. He reached out with his left hand, slammed his palm down on the red emergency security panel beside the head of Rachel’s bed, and held it down for three continuous seconds.
Instantly, a piercing, two-tone electronic alarm chimed through the ceiling speakers: CODE AMBER LOCKDOWN – MATERNITY WING – LEVEL 4.
Heavy, fire-rated magnetic steel doors at both ends of the fourth-floor corridor slammed shut with a deafening, concussive BANG that vibrated through the floorboards.
Julianna reached the threshold of the room, only to collide violently with the broad, muscular frame of Officer Kowalski, a six-foot-two off-duty Chicago police sergeant working hospital security. He caught her by both arms, his heavy grip locking her in place as she shrieked and thrashed like a wild animal.
"Get your filthy hands off me!" Julianna screamed, her blonde hair coming undone from its pins, falling across her wild, spittle-flecked face. "Do you know who my father is?! He’ll have your badge by noon! Let me go!"
"Nobody is going anywhere, ma'am," Officer Kowalski grunted, twisting her around with professional ease and forcing her arms behind her back. With a sharp, metallic click, a pair of stainless-steel handcuffs snapped around her manicured wrists. Her precious Birkin bag slipped from her fingers, tumbling to the floor and spilling gold lipsticks, luxury compacts, and a burner cellular phone across the linoleum.
Daniel stumbled backward, his knees buckling against the foot of Rachel’s bed. His hands flew to his hair, clutching his head as if his skull were about to fracture in two.
"No... no, no, no," Daniel groaned, a ragged, choking sound ripping from his throat. He looked at Julianna in handcuffs, then at Dr. Harrison, then at the forged DNA papers on the table. "Julianna... what did you do? What did you do?!"
"What did she do?" Dr. Harrison said, stepping toward the sobbing mistress, his face carved from dark granite. "She committed aggravated forgery, medical fraud, and conspiracy to extort a patient in an intensive recovery unit. Officer Kowalski, keep this room sealed. The Chicago Police Department and the state attorney’s office are already en route."
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Rachel sat up in the bed, the physical pain in her body completely forgotten, burned away by the incandescent light of truth. She looked at her husband—the broken, pathetic man cowering at the foot of her bed—and for the first time in five years, she didn't feel love, she didn't feel despair, and she didn't feel fear.
She felt only an unshakeable, sovereign disgust.
