T
HIS WAS THE
moment Kadin still relished as a physician, holding a new, perfectly formed life in his hands. People often took this miracle for granted, how DNA spelled out a code, whose transcription led to the formation of cells, which differentiated and began to form into organs, coming together to form an individual with a unique set of eyes, of fingerprints—a unique identity, yet in the image of their Creator.
“It’s a girl!” Kadin cradled the infant in his hands and laid her on the bed. With deft skill, he clamped then cut the cord, grabbed several towels, and began rubbing gently, coaxing her to take breaths to clear the amniotic fluid from her lungs.
“She’s not crying,” Lilly edged up.
“She’s not crying, but she’s smiling. Want to hold her?”
Lilly hesitated. She reached forward and took the baby from Kadin, bringing her close to her chest.
“She’s beautiful,” Lilly said.
Nathan leaned over and caressed the baby’s cheek. “What did you expect? Her mother is, too.”
Kadin raised an eyebrow at Nathan’s statement. It was easy to see the comfort between the two of them, and Kadin felt he’d let Lilly slip away by not fighting for her more. Nathan shared her unwavering belief in Drake’s guilt, and he was willing to put himself professionally on the line in all respects.
Setting his troubled thoughts aside, he watched Lilly bond with her infant. Even though Lilly had decided to give the babies up for adoption, she exhibited all the behaviors new mothers possess. First, they’d gently stroke the face, and then open up the covers to verify that there were ten fingers, ten toes, two ears. In all the time he’d known Lilly, this was the first moment he’d seen her express true joy.
Not too long after the delivery of the first placenta, the second amniotic sac broke. Lilly fell backward onto Nathan as another contraction hit.
“Nathan, take the baby from her.”
He stood and eased Lilly back into a bank of pillows.
“Oh, geez,” he said, taking the small infant into his hands, holding it away from his body like one would a smelly sock.
“Nathan, you have to bring her close, into your chest.”
At first Kadin didn’t understand what was happening. Just as Nathan tucked the infant closer, he almost dropped her as his whole body spun. Nathan fell to his knees, looking as blood spilled from his left arm. He half handed, half tossed the baby girl to Kadin.
“What are you doing?”
“I’ve been shot!”
“What?”
Glass shattered and broke. Kadin saw dark indentations form on the wall just above Lilly’s head as Nathan killed the lights.
“Get her on the floor!” Nathan ordered.
Lilly cried out, racked with another contraction. Kadin took the child and slid her under the bed. He groped for Lilly, his eyes still not adjusted to the darkness.
“Nathan, you’re going to have to help me.”
Kadin grabbed her feet as Nathan secured her with his good arm around her chest and they lifted her onto the floor.
“I have to push,” Lilly said.
“No! I have to see if the baby turned. He may be breech.”
“Kadin …”
“Let me check the baby. Nathan, are you all right?”
“I think it just grazed me. I’m going to take a look outside.”
“That’s not a good idea. We’re secure in here.”
“Let me do the police work! You handle the delivery!”
Kadin eased Lilly against the wall.
“Lilly, I’m going to feel for the baby’s head.”
“Hurry … he’s not going to wait.”
“All right. Just breathe through the next contraction.”
Another window shattered, the cool night air evaporated the sweat that collected at the nape of Kadin’s neck.
“This might bother you a little bit.”
What met his fingers was not the smooth surface of a head, but the small pebbles of five tiny toes.
The baby was breech.
“Nathan, I need you over here.”
No response.
“Nathan!”
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“He’s breech.”
Kadin heard the fine pitch of a bullet graze past his ear and shatter the plaster on the wall to his right. Lilly began to cry, and he wasn’t sure how long he could hold it together himself. He began thinking through Bible verses he’d memorized about the Lord’s promises, but at this juncture, he felt his faith wavering under the responsibility of bringing Lilly, these babies, and himself through this alive.
Grabbing several pillows from the headboard, he placed them behind Lilly. Now that his eyes had adjusted to the dark, he saw her fear and worry as he positioned himself, holding her knees in each of his hands. She was shivering and slick with sweat; racking sobs were making it difficult for her to breathe.
“Lilly. We’re fine.”
“The baby’s going to die.”
“Breech presentation is not a death sentence.”
“I’m going to die.”
“Lilly, please, listen. Just breathe with me. Come on, now. Deep breath in through your nose.” It took several attempts before she would follow his lead. “Good. That’s great! Now hold it and blow it out through your mouth.”
More glass breaking. Upper level.
Heavy footfalls on the floor above.
“Next contraction, I want easy, gentle pushing. Nothing too dramatic.”
“Aren’t you going to pull him out?”
“No. You’re going to do this.”
“His head is going to get stuck. He’ll suffocate.”
“Lilly, if I pull on the baby, that will cause your cervix to become more irritable and cause it to clamp down on the baby’s neck. Just give me easy, gentle pushing.”
A heavy thud shook the house.
Kadin supported the infant’s lower body as Lilly pushed. She was making slow, steady progress with each contraction.
“You’re doing great. We’re almost there. Whatever you do, don’t stop pushing.”
Kadin heard someone coming down the wooden steps. The lights turned on. His vision flashed white, and he waited for the pain of a bullet snapping into the back of his head.
“Just push, Lilly.”
She delivered the head. It was then, as Kadin held the baby boy in one hand and reached up to the bed for several towels that he paused, looking at the gun-wielding tattooed man that stood in the room. Kadin’s throat froze in fear, and he was unable to speak.
“I’m Drew. I’ve been helping Lilly. Thought Drake might show so I was hiding outside waiting.” He pointed with the tip of his gun. “What’s wrong with her? She did that right after the accident.”
Kadin turned.
Lilly was having another seizure.
April 3
T
HE AIR WAS
heavy and thick, like trying to breathe during times of high humidity. Lilly felt a tight band around her finger and heard a faint, constant, annoying beep in the distance. In the background, a voice beckoned her, calling her name with soft reassurance. A pressure on her cheek brought her fingers up to determine the cause. The pressure lightened, and soft fingers caressed her eyelids.
“Lilly. Wake up.”
She didn’t want to obey at first, but then the thoughts tumbled through her mind. There was a shooting. Nathan was injured.
The babies.
She opened her eyes and found Nathan lying beside her. He pulled the bed covers up and tucked them around her shoulders. The cabin was chilly as the wind blew through several broken windows. Lilly smoothed her hand over her belly; she felt a cord inhibit her progress and the blips picked up pace. At first, she didn’t know why the tears came so quickly, considering she’d prepared for this moment for months and intellectually felt that giving the twins away was in their best interest. But the emptiness of them not being part of her brought unexpected grief. Nathan placed his hand on her cheek, wiping her tears away with his thumb.
“Are they alive?”
“Yes.”
“Where are they?”
“Kadin took them. Isn’t that what you wanted? For them to be safe?”
“Are they?”
Lilly felt Nathan move to sit up. She grasped his wrist, and he eased his head back onto the pillow. The tears became uncontrollable sobbing, and before she realized or could deter his action, Nathan had gathered her in his arms, placing gentle kisses on her face. His tenderness calmed her anxiety, and she felt herself ease into his embrace until the tension within her passed.
“Why did Kadin leave?”
“Do you remember last night?”
Yesterday had been never-ending. The murdered physician. Driving back to Colorado. Being run off the road. Going into labor.
“You were shot.”
“It’s fine. Just a flesh wound, as they say. Kadin stitched me up before he left.”
“Why is he not here?”
Nathan pulled away. “Kadin was worried. The first baby, a little girl, was delivered okay. That’s when everything hit the fan. Though I can’t prove it, Drake was trying to finish you. Your missing friend intervened. Drew was watching the cabin from a distance when he saw the shooting start. We chased Drake off after a bit.”
Nathan lifted the small machine that was attached to Lilly’s finger and removed the clip.
“During the ruckus, you delivered the second baby, but he was breech. He came out all right but required some extra breaths to get him going. You were having a seizure, and Kadin gave you Valium to stop it. He felt like he had to move the babies to a more secure environment. Said he had someplace set up, like here, where he was going to try to take care of them unless he was forced to admit them into the hospital.”
Peace settled over Lilly. She’d accomplished her main goal, delivering the babies and getting them somewhere safe. “Where’s Drew?”
“He went with Kadin to provide an extra set of hands. Security if needed. Then he was going to disappear until we got everything ironed out.”
“Why didn’t you go?”
“I wanted to be here with you. I can’t tell you how crazy I’ve been. I know things are not supposed to happen this way. You probably think I’m misconstruing my feelings because I’m trying to help you, but the thought of you dying or being injured has left me paralyzed. I realize now what I was feeling was different than worry. It was fear of losing someone I loved and never seeing her again and leaving things unsaid that should have been spoken a long time ago.”
“Nathan, I’m a mess.”
He eased himself beside her and cupped her chin in his hand, searching her eyes until she stopped trying to look away. “It’s okay. I’m not expecting anything from you, but I am in love with you, and I’m not letting you leave me again.”
April 17
L
ILLY SAT IN
her car in a darkened corner of the hospital parking lot. The faint green glow of the vehicle’s digital clock cast a sickly shadow on her pale skin.
Ten minutes to go.
It didn’t take long for Lilly to hear of Kadin’s beating, likely at the hands of Drake but as yet unproven. Nathan had delivered the news in person, shaking his head often and slamming his fist into the table. Drake was just beyond the grasp of law enforcement, even though the noose around his neck was inching tighter day by day. Most of Nathan’s coworkers still felt Drew was the most viable suspect. Now Drew was off the grid, and Lilly knew they would never see him again until Drake was in jail.
As Nathan focused on Drake, Lilly’s fear was the safety of the twins. It had been two short weeks since their delivery. Kadin hadn’t worked since their birth, and in her heart she knew he’d been caring for them. The attack on Kadin meant Drake was seeking the babies. She had to find them first.
She didn’t reveal this conviction to Nathan. His coworkers still doubted him, and she didn’t want him putting himself in a position where his job would be at risk.
Lilly knew early morning would be the best time to execute her plan. The night was warm as she left her car, but she could see thunderstorms brewing over the mountains, lightning strikes flashed within the gray cotton mounds. She walked around the corner to one of the side entrances to the hospital, waiting for someone to leave through a door that was inaccessible from the outside. She was trying to avoid entrances with security cameras.
Thirty minutes passed, and the door opened, slamming against the side of the building as a janitor pushed through a rolling cart burdened with several trash bags. As he cleared the entrance, she slipped in and faced a concrete maze in the bowels of the hospital. This area was rarely visited by any member of the medical staff unless someone was bringing a body to the morgue.
She walked down the hall. Her footsteps echoing along the corridor competed with the sound of her own heartbeat rushing in her ears. Finding a stairwell, she took the steps to the floor where the ICU bays were housed. She’d not even asked Nathan for Kadin’s room number, wanting to keep him off the scent of her plan. The problem with this ICU was that it was split up into four different bays, and finding Kadin would not be that easy. It was almost three in the morning, which served her purpose well because oddly enough, that’s when this unit’s nursing staff changed hands.
Sneaking into a patient’s room, she pulled up the computer screen, hoping it would have the unit list open. She would have to find someone who hadn’t logged off, because her computer password and login had been disabled after her firing.
This user had logged off.
It took her two more tries before she found a computer with the patient list open. Making her way to Kadin’s group of rooms took longer than she would have liked. The next shift would be starting soon.
She eased through his door without garnering even one glance thus far at her presence. The nurses were still busy with patient hand-off report at the desk. During her time as an emergency physician, she had seen many people injured beyond recognition, but it didn’t prepare her in the slightest for seeing Kadin cocooned in his bed, beaten and unresponsive.
His head was shrouded in gauze, with a bolt screwed into his skull that monitored the pressure in his brain. That number was borderline high; his gray matter was at risk for being shifted into areas it wasn’t meant to go. That amount of compression meant brain cells would die and oxygen would be cut off under the atmosphere of diminished blood flow. She could feel her knees shake as she neared his bedside. The only sound in the room was the quiet noise of machines keeping him alive. A breathing tube in his mouth was secured with a blue plastic device to keep it in place.
His injuries were confined to his face. Both eyes were beaten and swollen closed. The right cheek was fractured, giving a caved-in appearance that even with the swelling was obviously different from the left. The medical team had placed a central line into his chest so his arms were free of IV lines. She took his hand in hers, letting the tears fall, dripping onto his sheets.
“Kadin?”
The weight of his choice overwhelmed her. How could anyone sustain such cruelty to protect the lives of others? He’d placed himself on the brink of death to keep her and the babies safe. She knew he’d kept her secret; otherwise they would all be dead. He didn’t stir to her voice, but she did notice his heartbeat rise slightly.
“I told you that you had to leave a way for me to get to the twins. Drake is hunting them. I have to keep them safe.”
His heartbeat remained elevated. She supinated the arm she held, rubbing her fingers along the underside of his forearm. There was a bandage that seemed out of place as there was no blood that seeped through the gauze and it would have been an unusual site for an earlier IV. She bent down, looking closer, and could see what appeared to be ink through the haze of the plastic tape. She picked at the edge with her fingers and pulled the dressing off.
It was a tattoo of a quilt with a date in the center.
The date of the twins’ birth.
It was then that a conversation she and Dana had on the night of her attack came to the forefront of her mind. Hastily, she left his bedside, made her way to the stairwell again, and traveled a few flights to the neonatal intensive care unit.
Lilly beckoned to a lone parent to let her in the locked unit. Once inside, she could see what Dana meant. Over each Isolette was a quilt that would help maintain a calm, soothing environment against the harsh light and sound of their artificial womb. Lilly walked by a few babies, fingering their quilts as she went. Blue for the boys, pink for the girls, but beyond simple patchwork. There were stars and intricate square designs. She was drawn to one blanket that had a figure at the top with an oversized hat so you couldn’t see the face. Appliquéd hearts showered down from his hands
Kadin’s tattoo was a replica of this quilt.
A nurse approached her with one eyebrow raised.
“Can I help you?”
Lilly took the nurse’s hand and shook it eagerly.
“I’m one of the new nurse practitioners. I got off work late, but I always like to peek in on the babies before I go home. I hope that’s all right.”
“Sure. It’s just odd to have someone here at three thirty in the morning.”
“Wouldn’t it be nice to have normal hours? It’s probably why I visit them, because I’m always working and never have time to meet a man and settle down.”
“Tell me about it.”
Lilly placed her hand gently over the quilt. “These blankets are amazing.”
“Aren’t they? The whole thing is quite tragic.”
“What do you mean?”
“You probably haven’t met Dr. Daughtry, but he’s an OB on staff here. Did you hear about his beating in the news?”
“He works here?”
“Yeah. Anyway, his sister makes these quilts, all of them. She lost a baby several years back, and this is her therapy, I guess. But there’s always a silver lining. This is the baby boy she just adopted.”
Lilly’s fingers froze on the quilt surface. She moved her hand and lifted up the edge of the quilt that draped over the side. Her son lay on his stomach nestled in a sheath of soft lamb’s wool, his head rested on one arm. She brushed away the welling tears.
“Are you all right?”
“Dr. Daughtry’s sister adopted this baby?”
“It’s even more amazing than that. He’s a twin. Sister is at home with Mom. It’s strange how everyone seems to want to peek in on him tonight. He’s been getting lots of visitors.”
Lilly’s stomach burned. “Really, who else but a crazy, lonely person like me would be visiting these little guys so early in the morning?”
“Dr. Maguire stopped by.”
“And saw this baby?”
“Though I never was a fan of his, it’s terrible him being falsely accused of rape. He ended up opening a practice of his own to get a fresh start. He came in for a delivery.”
Lilly’s heart tempered up a notch and she fingered her dyed blonde hair then shoved her fashion frames higher on her nose. Was the nurse astute enough to discover her ruse?
The nurse continued. “He’s really concerned about what happened to Kadin. They used to work together. When I told him Kadin’s sister adopted this little one, he wanted her address so he could stop by and visit.”
“Wow! That is sweet. Did you happen to give him that?”
“Yeah, he said he was going by right after he got off call.”