Chapter 5 - The Hospital Lockdown
By noon, I was back at the hospital. I had handed the audio recording and the prescription bottles over to Detective Vance, who had immediately issued an arrest warrant for Patricia Parker for domestic assault and felony endangerment.
But Patricia had vanished. She hadn't gone back to her apartment, and her phone was turned off. She was a fugitive, and that made her infinitely more dangerous.
I sprinted through the hospital corridors toward the intensive care wing where Hannah was staying. When I arrived, I found the unit in a state of high alert. Two police officers were stationed outside Hannah’s door, and Dr. Grant was speaking urgently into a house phone.
“What’s going on?” I asked, panic spiking again. “Is Hannah okay?”
Dr. Grant looked up, her expression softening when she saw me. She hung up the phone. “Mr. Parker, your wife is stable. The antibiotics are working, and her fever has dropped to 100.2 degrees. But we have a security issue. Someone matching your mother’s description was spotted on the security cameras in the basement parking garage twenty minutes ago. She was trying to access the hospital’s service elevators.”
“She’s here for Owen,” I said, the realization hitting me like ice water. “Where is he?”
“He’s in the neonatal security nursery on the fourth floor,” Dr. Grant said. “It’s a locked unit. No one gets in without an electronic badge and a matching parental ID band. She can’t get to him.”
“You don’t know my mother,” I said, my voice shaking. “She was a hospital administrator twenty years ago. She knows how these facilities operate. She knows how to manipulate staff, how to find blind spots in security, and how to lie her way through a locked door.”
Just then, the overhead PA system crackled to life, a calm but urgent automated voice echoing through the hallways: “Code Pink, Neonatal Unit, Fourth Floor. Code Pink.”
Code Pink. Infant abduction.
My heart stopped beating.
I didn't wait for Dr. Grant or the police officers. I turned and sprinted toward the stairwell, my legs moving faster than they ever had in my life. I flew up the stairs to the fourth floor, throwing the heavy fire door open so hard it slammed against the wall.
The nursery hallway was chaos. Nurses were crying, security guards were shouting into radios, and the electronic glass doors to the nursery were shattered.
“Where is she?!” I roared, grabbing a security guard by his vest. “Where is the woman who took the baby?!”
“She took the service exit toward the roof!” the guard gasped, pointing down a service corridor. “She has a weapon—a scalpel she stole from a prep tray!”
I didn't think about the danger. I didn't think about the legalities. I only thought about my tiny, defenseless boy in the arms of a woman who had completely lost her grip on reality.
I ran down the service corridor, following the trail of heavy metal doors until I reached the final door leading out onto the hospital roof. I pushed it open, stepping out into the blinding afternoon sun and the howling wind of the helipad.
There she was.
Patricia stood near the edge of the roof, the city skyline stretching out behind her. She was wearing a stolen nurse's scrub jacket over her clothes. In her left arm, she held Owen, who was crying frantically against the wind. In her right hand, she held a gleaming surgical scalpel, its blade catching the sunlight.
“Mom!” I shouted, taking a cautious step forward, raising my hands in surrender. “Mom, stop! Look at me. It’s Ethan. Please, put him down.”
“Stay back!” she shrieked, her eyes wide, wild, and bloodshot. The elegant, poised woman I had known my entire life was completely gone. In her place was a broken, desperate creature. “They want to take him away from me, Ethan! Just like they took you! They poisoned your mind against me! I won’t let them ruin him too!”
“No one is taking him, Mom,” I lied, my voice trembling as I tried to keep her focused on me, away from the edge. “Just give him to me. Let’s talk about this. We can fix this.”
“We can’t fix it!” she cried, a tear cutting through her heavy makeup. “You betrayed me for her! That weak, pathetic little girl! I built an empire for you, Ethan! I gave you everything! And you threw me away for a woman who can’t even handle a crying baby!”
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She took a step backward. Her heel caught on the raised lip of the concrete ledge. She wobbled, losing her balance for a terrifying fraction of a second over a ten-story drop.
Owen let out a piercing, helpless wail.
