Chapter 9 - SAINT AGNES HOSPITAL
Saint Agnes Hospital had been abandoned for twenty-seven years.
Broken windows lined the brick walls.
Vines covered the ambulance entrance.
The maternity wing had burned shortly after New Dawn ended operations.
The county claimed the damage was too expensive to repair.
Now I understood why no one wanted the building reopened.
Jack parked beside the old emergency entrance.
Owen arrived in an unmarked vehicle.
Boone, Cole, and Mateo spread out around the property.
State investigators were still forty minutes away.
We did not have forty minutes.
Emily was inside.
Jack broke the chain across the emergency doors.
The smell of mold and burned wood filled the hallway.
My shoes crunched across broken glass.
Faded arrows still pointed toward MATERNITY.
I had not returned since the morning Margaret brought me home.
The walls remembered more than I did.
The elevator doors were sealed.
We followed the stairwell toward the basement.
Halfway down, I heard a baby crying.
I stopped.
Jack turned.
“What is it?”
“You don’t hear that?”
The stairwell was silent.
The sound existed only in my memory.
I saw my eighteen-year-old hands reaching toward an empty crib.
I saw Margaret blocking the door.
I heard a man shouting from below.
Daniel.
I had forgotten his voice.
Now it returned.
“Laura has a right to know.”
Then another voice.
Raymond.
“Laura will know whatever her mother tells her.”
I gripped the railing.
“I remember.”
Jack stepped closer.
“What?”
“Daniel was here.”
A gunshot sounded beneath us.
We ran.
The basement corridor opened into an old surgical storage area.
Emily sat tied to a metal chair.
Blood marked one side of her face.
Raymond stood behind her with a gun.
The medical ledger lay on a table.
A portable heater burned beside it.
Owen aimed his weapon.
“Let her go.”
Raymond smiled.
“You always were an emotional boy.”
“Rebecca Sloan was my mother.”
“She was a thief and a liar.”
“She was a nurse.”
“She tried to steal you.”
“She tried to save me.”
Raymond looked at Emily.
“Everyone becomes heroic once the witnesses are dead.”
Emily stared at me.
“Why does he keep calling you my mother?”
My voice disappeared.
There was no gentle way to tell a thirty-two-year-old woman that her entire identity had been built from fear.
“Because I gave birth to you.”
Emily’s face became blank.
“No.”
“You had a twin brother.”
She looked toward Jack.
He removed the silver medal.
Her eyes moved to the crescent birthmark beneath his ear.
“That is impossible.”
“I know,” Jack said.
Raymond placed the gun against her head.
“Family reunions are touching.”
Owen stepped forward.
“Do not.”
Raymond looked at him.
“You want the truth?”
He pointed toward a steel door at the end of the corridor.
“Open it.”
Owen did not move.
Raymond tossed him a ring of keys.
“Go meet your mother.”
Owen approached the door.
The third key opened it.
A hidden room waited beyond.
The walls were covered in photographs.
Forty-one babies.
Forty-one mothers.
Forty-one new identities.
In the center stood a rusted hospital gurney.
A skeleton lay beneath a burned white coat.
A second skeleton rested beside it.
One wore Dr. Samuel Pike’s identification tag.
The other wore a silver class ring.
I recognized the initials.
D.P.
Daniel Pike.
Jack moved beside me.
His father had been lying beneath Saint Agnes for thirty-two years.
Raymond laughed softly.
“Now you know.”
Jack turned toward him.
The look on his face frightened me.
Raymond lifted the gun from Emily and aimed at Jack.
“Your father died begging Margaret to save you.”
Jack took another step.
“You killed him.”
“No.”
May you like
Raymond’s eyes shifted toward my mother’s name in the ledger.
“Margaret did.”
