Chapter 4 - The Escape
The shrill, relentless scream of the fire alarm perfectly masked the frantic sound of my panicked breathing.
Wyatt did not hesitate for a single second when the nurse delivered the horrifying news.
He violently ripped the IV line from my arm, pressing a thick piece of white gauze over the bleeding vein to stop the flow.
“We are taking the staff service elevator right now,” he ordered, throwing an oversized doctor's coat over my torn, blood-stained clothes.
I waddled down the corridor as fast as my aching, eight-month-pregnant body would physically allow, desperately clutching the coat closed.
Thick gray smoke began to fill the hospital hallway, acrid and blinding, burning my eyes and scorching my dry throat.
We slipped safely into the steel interior of the service elevator just as I heard heavy combat boots rounding the corner behind us.
The metal doors slid shut just in time, cutting off the terrifying sight of masked men carrying heavy tactical rifles.
“Why are you risking your life to help me?” I asked Wyatt as the elevator began its rapid plummet toward the hospital's basement.
He did not look at me when he finally answered the question.
“Because my older sister was Arthur Vance’s first wife,” he said quietly, his voice laced with decades of unresolved grief.
The horrifying revelation hit me like a physical blow to the chest, knocking the remaining wind out of my lungs.
Before my exhausted brain could even begin to process this terrifying connection, the elevator jolted to a violent, metal-screeching halt.
The primary power died instantly, plunging our tiny metal box into absolute, suffocating darkness.
I felt a sharp, agonizing cramp tighten across my belly, entirely different from the traumatic injury I had sustained at the store.
It was a real, undeniable labor contraction.
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Then, the terrifying sound of heavy metal tools prying against the elevator doors echoed loudly from the outside.
Someone was forcing the doors open, and a blinding beam from a tactical flashlight cut aggressively through our darkness.
