Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 74379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
My eyes were trained ahead as I looked up at the number two painted on the wall above my head when I heard the screams.
“You stupid, no good whore!”
My head tilted to the side, and I leaned over the stairs to look up.
I couldn’t see anything.
I could hear voices, though.
The voice sounded familiar, but with the way that the stairwell contorted voices, I couldn’t even begin to tell you who, or what floor they were even on.
I started up to the next landing, the voices getting louder, and paused when my phone vibrated in my pocket.
I reached in and pulled it out, seeing that it wasn’t my phone, but Krisney’s.
I pressed the green accept button and put it to my ear just as another screech rent the air.
I leaned over the stairwell again, looked up, and immediately brought my head in just in time for a body to come flying over the stairwell.
The body screamed on her way down—and it was a her because I could see her long hair streaming upwards as she fell—to the ground at basement level.
My mouth fell open.
“Holy shit,” I breathed, the phone to my ear.
“Krisney?” the woman on the other end of the line said.
“Uh, no,” I said. “This is her fiancé, Reed. Mom?”
I didn’t know what to do.
The minute that my mom asked for Krisney, I knew that she was working. The other nurse had said she worked opposite shifts from my mother, meaning that my mom was there. Where Krisney should be…
“Reed,” my mother breathed.
I looked down at the body that was writhing two floors below, then up, still seeing nothing.
I climbed two sets of stairs, my suspicions getting to the point of screaming inside of me.
“The babies both had bouts of apnea today,” she said, making my foot stall on the third floor. “Both of their lungs collapsed. The right one on Baxter, and the left one on Dash.”
At the same time?
My eyes went up, and I froze.
Krisney was down on the ground, crying.
Her eyes met mine.
I looked over the landing again and studied the woman on the ground.
Caria.
My eyes flicked back up to Krisney.
“Are they okay?” I rasped.
There was so much going on that I didn’t know what to do. Who to go to first.
One part of me was wanting to run up to Krisney, while the other wanted to run down to the NICU where my babies were. The other, and this was a very minute part, wanted to go all the way down the flight of stairs and see to the woman—Caria—who had fallen.
“We were able to get the lungs reinflated…” she paused. “You know that this is pretty common in premies, correct?”
“Yes,” I croaked.
What else was common in ones so young? Brain bleeds. Digestive problems. Mental delays.
The list went on and on and on, and I had tried really hard not to think about that. To think about the fact that these babies had such a hard road in front of them.
“Okay,” she said. “Today, they’re restricting visitation due to the problems, but I’ll keep you updated, and let you know if anything else goes wrong, okay?”
“Yeah, Mom.” I croaked. “Thank you.”
She hung up, and immediately I got a text from her, but I didn’t have time to look at it.
After shoving the phone back into my pocket, I took the last eight steps that led me to Krisney, and looked down at her.
“Kris…”
“She had a gun.”
“What?”
Krisney gestured to the side where Caria had plunged down from, but her eyes were on the bag that was two steps up on the landing.
“She had a gun.” Then she tilted her head. “Reed, I think there’s something alive in that bag.”
The bag was one of those boho bags that crossed over the shoulder. A huge monstrosity that did appear to be moving.
“What the fuck?”
“Go look.”
I reached into my pocket and handed her the phone. “Call 911.”
“Were you talking to your mother?”
“Yeah,” I croaked. “The babies…their lungs collapsed. Mom said that they’re okay now, stable. But they’re restricting visitation for today until they can be sure that they really are stable before letting us in.”
Her head dropped. “I was so scared. That’s why I’m in here…Reed, I think that she was on her way to the NICU floor. I don’t know what she was going to do, but I feel like she was headed to our babies.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I continued to make my way to the bag.
“She didn’t make it,” I growled, then dropped down on one knee to look into the bag.
My heart literally stalled in my chest when I saw skin.
Then a hand. A head. Two heads. Two more hands.
“Oh, fuck.”
***
“The babies have sensors on their feet, usually around one ankle,” I murmured, looking as the parents were reunited with their healthy babies. “Caria had access to the tools needed to take them off without setting off the alarm. She’s put them on multiple times before.”