Chapter 2 - THE DISAPPEARING RECORD
For several seconds, I could only hear the soft breathing of my daughter against my chest.
“What does that mean?”
Luka did not answer immediately.
Instead, he looked at the security camera above the nurses’ station.
“Can you walk?”
“I just gave birth.”
“I know.”
“Then stop talking to me like we’re escaping a burning building.”
His eyes met mine.
“We might be.”
That was when the computer at the nurses’ station started beeping.
The nurse frowned and leaned toward the screen.
Then her face changed.
“That’s strange.”
“What?”
She clicked twice.
“Your discharge file is gone.”
I stared at her.
“What do you mean gone?”
“Your patient number exists, but the delivery record is blank.”
Luka closed his eyes for one second.
Almost like he had expected it.
Then the nurse looked at my daughter’s bracelet.
“Oh my God.”
“What?”
“The infant record is gone too.”
Luka immediately took out his phone.
“Marcus, lock the south garage.”
I stared at him.
“Who is Marcus?”
“Someone who still owes me.”
He ended the call.
I wanted answers.
Instead, Luka took the hospital folder from the counter and handed it to me.
“Keep this.”
“Why?”
“Because it may be the last paper record proving your daughter was born here.”
My daughter made a tiny sound and moved against me.
The ordinary sweetness of it nearly broke me.
Hours ago, I had imagined Daniel holding her.
I had imagined photographs.
Flowers.
Our first night as a family.
Instead, I was standing beside a tattooed stranger while someone erased my child from a hospital database.
A woman in navy scrubs suddenly appeared at the far end of the corridor.
She saw Luka.
Then she turned around.
Luka noticed.
“Stay here.”
He moved after her.
I should have obeyed.
I didn’t.
Holding my baby carefully, I followed.
The woman entered a supply room.
Luka reached the door before it closed.
Inside, the woman was tearing labels from a stack of medical folders.
One label fell near my feet.
I bent down.
ELENA REED.
Underneath my name was another code.
M-17 ACTIVE MATERNAL SUBJECT.
I looked up.
“What is a maternal subject?”
The woman’s face drained of color.
Luka stepped between us.
“Who ordered the deletion?”
She shook her head.
“I can’t tell you.”
Luka said nothing.
He only stared.
The woman began crying.
“They said they’d take my license.”
“Who?”
She whispered a name.
“Dr. Arthur Vale.”
I knew that name.
Everyone in the city did.
Arthur Vale was chairman of the hospital foundation.
He was also Daniel’s godfather.
The woman reached into her pocket and pulled out a flash drive.
“I copied the file before they deleted it.”
Luka took it.
“What’s on it?”
She looked at me.
May you like
Then at my daughter.
“The reason they’ve been watching Elena since she was thirteen.”
