CHAPTER 1
It was the noise of their boots that first drew my eyes from my work.
At precisely 8:17 on a Sunday morning, four men in black motorcycle boots walked across the shining floor of the maternity ward. Their heavy footsteps interrupted my concentration on the medication chart lying open at the desk.
Only afterward did I see the infant carrier.
One of them was holding it close to his chest, with remarkable care.
Then my attention caught on something else, something that put every professional instinct on alert.
Those men seemed entirely out of place on a maternity floor.
Or so I thought in the opening seconds.
By then, I had spent nearly fourteen years in nursing, eleven of them at that hospital. I had learned to recognize a situation that might become a problem well before anyone formally identified it as one.
Four enormous bikers approaching a secured maternity corridor fit that description perfectly.
They all had on dark shirts under weathered leather vests, heavy jeans, and motorcycle boots. Tattoos covered much of their exposed arms.
The man who appeared oldest was also the biggest. He wore a red bandana, and his graying brown beard reached nearly halfway down his chest.
Walking next to him was a shorter, heavily built man with a bald head and a substantial gray mustache.
The younger one followed, cradling the covered carrier against himself.
The last man had broad shoulders and said almost nothing. He kept looking back toward the elevators, as though he was waiting for someone to appear behind them.
Before I had made a deliberate decision, my hand slipped under the counter.
Our security button was there.
I left it untouched.
For the moment.
The man with the red bandana stopped a few feet short of the nurses' station, keeping both hands where I could see them.
“We're here to see Dorothy Chen.”
His voice was much softer than I had anticipated.
I looked directly at him.
“Mrs. Chen isn't on the maternity floor.”
“I'm aware of that.”
“Then what brings you to this unit?”
The younger biker adjusted his grip on the carrier. A soft noise escaped from beneath its cover, and I turned toward him immediately.
“Are you carrying a baby in there?”
The four of them exchanged glances.
“Yes, ma'am,” the younger man replied.
All the warnings years of hospital instruction had planted in me seemed to come alive together.
I rose from my chair.
“Set the carrier down.”
He became motionless, but he neither lowered it nor moved away.
The older man raised one hand slightly.
“Let's take this slowly.”
“He needs to set that carrier down and step away from it.”
The younger man's face shifted. I braced for anger.
What I saw instead was fear.
He held the carrier closer.
The man in the bandana looked steadily at me.
“She isn't going on the floor.”
“Then none of you takes another step.”
We stayed frozen for several seconds.
At the desk behind me, a nurse's typing stopped. Another nurse turned slowly from the medication cabinet. Near the elevators, a volunteer looked up.
The whole ward suddenly seemed hushed.
Then the oldest biker put a hand inside his vest.
My thumb found the security button.
He stopped at once.
Moving with exaggerated care, he brought out a mobile phone.
“I don't have a weapon. We're not here for trouble. Please look at this.”
He placed the phone on the counter and slid it across.
I kept my hands off it.
“You don't need to pick it up,” he added. “You can read it there.”
The sender's name was Linda Ruiz.
Linda worked with us as a pediatric social worker. I knew her well, and the wording on the screen sounded like her.
The message read:
Dorothy has very little time left. Baby Sophie needs to see her great-grandmother. Bring the brothers together. Room 304. Get there before administration does.
CHAPTER 2
I went through the message once, then a second time, then a third.
Gradually, I withdrew my hand from beneath the counter.
I studied the covered carrier before looking back at the men.
“Tell me what's going on.”
The eldest released a long breath.
“How much I can explain depends on how much time Dorothy still has.”
“Who are you?”
He opened his vest far enough for me to see two worn patches. One belonged to a veterans' motorcycle group. The other depicted a small blue house above the words HARBOR CHILD SUPPORT NETWORK.
“I'm a foster parent.”
The man with the gray mustache nodded.
“Me too.”
“I take emergency placements,” the younger one said.
“Respite care,” the fourth added.
I looked from one to another.
“All four of you foster children?”
A tired, uneven smile crossed the older man's face.
“We take the children people aren't lining up for.”
He glanced at the carrier.
“Babies in particular.”
He reached inside his vest once more and produced a folder, which he spread open on the counter.
There were identification cards, state foster licenses, authorization for a temporary placement, emergency medical consent, and clearance for neonatal transport.
Everything looked genuine on an initial inspection.
The younger man eased the carrier onto a chair nearby, keeping one hand firmly around its handle.
“Her name's Sophie.”
I lifted the first page.
A female newborn, six days old. An emergency temporary placement requiring neonatal medical monitoring.
I raised my eyes.
“She's just six days old?”
He nodded.
“Six days, nine hours.”
That precise answer made me reconsider him.
Someone indifferent to an infant did not measure her lifetime in hours.
“What happened?”
Another glance passed among the four men before the oldest answered.