Chapter 10: The Emergency Delivery
The operating room lights passed above me in bright white lines.
Dr. Walsh walked beside the bed.
“We have to deliver the baby now.”
“Will she survive?”
“We’re going to do everything possible.”
“Will I survive?”
She held my gaze.
“Yes.”
There was no hesitation in her voice, even though I saw the concern in her eyes.
Dad was stopped outside the operating room.
He leaned over the bed and kissed my forehead.
“I’m right here.”
“I’m scared.”
“So am I.”
He squeezed my hand.
“But fear doesn’t get the final word.”
The doors closed between us.
The emergency delivery moved quickly.
I felt pressure, heard voices, and watched people move behind blue surgical drapes.
Then there was silence.
A silence far too similar to the one in my bedroom after Dad pulled away the blanket.
“Why isn’t she crying?”
No one answered immediately.
A team of neonatal specialists gathered around a small table.
Then a faint sound rose above the machines.
A tiny cry.
Weak.
Angry.
Alive.
Tears ran into my hair.
Dr. Walsh leaned over me.
“You have a daughter.”
They allowed me to see her for only a moment before taking her to the neonatal intensive care unit.
She was impossibly small.
Her fingers opened and closed beneath the clear plastic of the incubator.
I named her Grace.
Because survival sometimes arrived quietly.
Because I needed to believe our lives could still contain something gentle.
The surgery saved us both, but Grace needed help breathing.
I was taken to recovery under police protection.
Dad stood outside the NICU window, staring at his granddaughter.
Detective Torres found him there.
“We located the person who took the photograph.”
A hospital technician had been paid to access the security cameras. Ryan used the live feed to make police believe he was nearby.
The technician admitted that Ryan had contacted him from a prepaid phone.
The call originated near the private airfield.
Police surrounded the airfield.
They found the plane waiting.
The pilot had been paid in cash and told he would transport a family of three.
But Ryan never arrived.
“He knows the exits are covered,” Torres said.
“Then where is he going?”
A nurse approached them.
“Colonel Bennett?”
She held a folded military jacket.
“Someone left this at the main desk for you.”
Dad recognized it immediately.
It was the jacket he had worn the day he found me.
He had sent it home with one of his soldiers after changing clothes at the hospital.
The soldier had reported it missing from his vehicle.
Pinned beneath the silver eagle insignia was a note.
You took my wife and daughter. I’ll take the one thing you value most.
Dad looked toward my room.
Then toward the NICU.
His phone rang.
The caller ID displayed the number of his commanding officer’s private line.
Dad answered.
Ryan’s voice came through.
“You built your whole life around honor, Colonel.”
Dad’s hand tightened around the phone.
“What do you want?”
“I want Emily to tell the truth.”
“She already did.”
“No,” Ryan said. “I want her to confess to what she signed.”
The call ended.
Detective Torres frowned.
“What did Emily sign?”
Dad looked through the glass at me.
May you like
Neither of us knew.
But Ryan clearly believed one of those documents could still save him.
