Chapter 13 - The Last Ward.
I left Ava with June, Miriam, and four federal agents at the gala.
Walking away from her felt unnatural, but carrying her into danger would have been worse.
Luka and I followed the tracker through a storm that turned the city streets silver.
Grant rode in a federal vehicle behind us after offering the agents access codes in exchange for consideration.
He was still bargaining with other people's lives.
The condemned wing of St. Catherine's stood behind plywood barriers and demolition fencing.
Inside, pale green walls peeled beneath emergency lights.
The corridor looked exactly like the one from which Grant had abandoned us, only older and stripped of witnesses.
Abandoned bassinets lined one wall beneath sheets of plastic.
Patient names had been scratched from the doors, but their room numbers remained.
Thomas had once told me institutions preferred clean records to clean consciences.
Now I understood that the ruined ward was not empty.
It was crowded with every truth someone had been paid to forget.
Eleanor had tied Thomas to a chair inside the former delivery room.
The DNA envelope lay on a metal tray beside an incinerator chute.
“You should have let history bury your mother,” Eleanor told me.
I activated the recorder inside my coat.
“You mean the woman whose cells made you rich?”
“Her death made treatment possible for millions.”
“Her consent would have made it medicine.”
Luka moved along the dark observation room behind the glass.
Eleanor did not see him.
She admitted that Grant had been told Luka's stolen sample would be used during my fertility procedure.
The pairing was supposed to produce both immune markers in one child.
“But Thomas entered the laboratory before implantation,” she said.
My father lifted his head.
“I corrected what you stole.”
“What did you do?”
“I returned the sample Nora had consented to use.”
Grant's sample.
The door behind me opened.
Grant had slipped away from the agents in the outer corridor.
He stared at Thomas.
“You made Ava mine?”
“I gave Nora the procedure she was promised.”
Grant lunged for the DNA envelope.
Eleanor knocked the tray into the incinerator chute.
Luka crashed through the observation door and caught the envelope before it fell beyond reach.
Grant struck him from behind.
Thomas kicked the tray beneath Grant's feet, and both men fell away from the chute.
I pulled the fire lever.
Sprinklers burst overhead as federal agents entered the ward.
Eleanor tried to destroy the recorder, unaware that it had transmitted her confession live to Miriam.
Agents freed Thomas and arrested her.
Grant sat against the wall, soaked and shaking.
He looked smaller than the man who had left me hours after Ava's birth.
Luka returned the sealed envelope to my hands.
“Still yours.”
Grant crawled forward until an agent restrained him.
“Nora, please.”
“You begged me for nothing when I carried your child.”
“I walked away because I believed she was his.”
“You walked away because you believed blood excused cruelty.”
Grant looked at the envelope as if it contained his sentence.
“If you open it, I cannot deny what I did to her.”
May you like
I slipped the reports beneath my coat.
“That is exactly why I will.”
