Chapter 2: The Hidden Nursery

Police arrived within minutes.

As officers questioned everyone, Quincy quietly tugged on Elena's sleeve.

"There are more babies."

Elena looked down.

"What do you mean?"

"The room downstairs."

His frightened eyes filled with tears.

"They keep them there before they're gone."

The police captain immediately demanded access to the hospital's basement.

Hospital administrators refused.

"There is no basement nursery."

Quincy pointed toward an old freight elevator.

"There."

The doors opened with a rusty groan.

Dust covered the hallway beyond.

It looked abandoned.

Until they heard it.

A baby crying.

Then another.

And another.

The officers rushed forward.

Behind a locked steel door, they discovered a hidden ward no official blueprint showed.

Inside were six newborns.

Each wore temporary hospital bracelets.

None had been registered.

Some had been reported as stillborn only hours earlier.

Others had never existed in hospital records at all.

The room erupted into chaos.

Doctors were handcuffed.

Nurses burst into tears.

One elderly janitor collapsed into a chair.

"I begged them to stop," he sobbed.

"They've been selling healthy babies for nearly twenty years."

Elena stared at Margaret.

"You murdered mothers with grief."

Margaret's voice remained eerily calm.

"I gave unwanted children better lives."

"No," Elena replied.

"You stole them."

Then one detective made an even darker discovery.

Every missing child case traced back to one surgeon.

Dr. Richard Hale.

The hospital's founder.

Margaret's older brother.