Chapter 4 - THE HOSPITAL THAT BURNED
St. Catherine’s Hospital had been abandoned for eighteen years.
The city planned to demolish it three different times.
Every time, money disappeared.
Permits changed.
Deals collapsed.
The building remained.
Like a body nobody wanted to bury.
Daniel parked two blocks away.
“You’re not going inside,” he told Emily.
She stared at him.
“My entire life is apparently inside that building.”
“It could be a trap.”
“It is a trap.”
Margaret opened her door.
“That doesn’t mean we have a choice.”
Daniel grabbed her wrist.
“If Thomas has Ruth, he wants something.”
“He wants control.”
“No. He already had control. He wants something else.”
Emily held up the photograph.
“This?”
Daniel looked at it.
“Maybe.”
Margaret studied the image again.
Two babies.
She had assumed the child in Thomas’s arms was another patient.
But now she noticed the blanket.
Pale yellow with a small blue rabbit embroidered near the edge.
Her mother had sewn that blanket.
It belonged to her daughter.
Margaret looked at the baby in her own arms.
Pink blanket.
Different child.
Her heart began pounding.
“Daniel.”
“What?”
She held up the picture.
“If he had my daughter…”
Daniel stared.
Emily leaned in.
“Then who are you holding?”
Margaret couldn’t answer.
They entered through a broken side door.
Inside, the hospital smelled of mold, rust, and rain.
Their footsteps echoed.
Old signs still hung from the walls.
MATERNITY.
RADIOLOGY.
SURGERY.
Margaret’s breathing became shallow.
Twenty-two years disappeared again.
She heard screaming.
She smelled smoke.
She remembered nurses running.
Then another memory surfaced.
A nurse leaning over her bed before the fire.
“Mrs. Ashford, your daughter needs another blood test.”
Margaret stopped walking.
“What is it?” Emily asked.
“I remember something.”
Daniel raised his flashlight.
Margaret spoke slowly.
“A nurse took my baby from the room about twenty minutes before the alarm.”
Daniel stared at her.
“What did she look like?”
“Red hair. Young. Maybe thirty.”
Daniel swore.
“What?”
“That wasn’t a nurse.”
“How do you know?”
“Because there was a woman with red hair working in records that night.”
“Who?”
Daniel looked toward the darkness ahead.
“Thomas’s sister.”
Margaret’s face went cold.
“Ruth.”
A sound came from upstairs.
A chair scraping.
Then a muffled scream.
They ran.
On the third floor, they found Ruth tied to an old wheelchair.
Her gray hair covered her face.
Tape covered her mouth.
Margaret rushed to her.
“Ruth!”
Daniel checked the hall.
“No sign of Thomas.”
Emily pulled the tape away.
Ruth gasped.
“You shouldn’t have come.”
Margaret untied her wrists.
“Did Thomas do this?”
Ruth began crying.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For helping him.”
Margaret stopped.
Ruth looked at Emily.
“I was the one who took you from the nursery.”
Emily’s face emptied.
Margaret whispered, “Why?”
Ruth shook her head.
“You still don’t understand.”
“Then make me understand.”
Ruth looked at Margaret.
“You didn’t give birth to one baby that night.”
May you like
Silence.
“You gave birth to twins.”
