Chapter 4: The Neonatal Ward
The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit was a world completely separated from the rest of the hospital. It was quiet, bathed in dim, soothing light, and filled with the rhythmic, mechanical sighs of ventilators and the soft beeping of monitors.
After meticulously scrubbing his hands and donning a yellow isolation gown, Harry was led by a gentle pediatric nurse to a clear, plastic incubator in the corner of the room.
He stopped a few feet away, his breath hitching. Inside the incubator lay his daughter, Lily. She was impossibly small—barely the size of his hand—with translucent skin and a tangle of tubes and wires attached to her tiny chest and face. She looked so fragile that Harry was terrified to even exhale in her direction.
"She's doing remarkably well for thirty-two weeks," the nurse said, her voice a comforting murmur. "Her heart rate is strong. We’re giving her a little help breathing, but she’s already trying to breathe over the machine. That’s a great sign. She’s got her mother’s fighting spirit."
Harry stepped closer, slowly reaching through the small porthole on the side of the incubator. He extended his index finger, and to his absolute astonishment, Lily’s tiny hand instinctively curled around it. Her grip was weak, but to Harry, it felt like the strongest anchor in the world.
Tears pricked his eyes, blurring the harsh lights of the monitors. "I'm right here, Lily," he whispered, his voice thick with emotion. "Daddy's right here. Your mom is resting, but she loves you so much. You just keep fighting, okay? We're going to take you home soon."
For a long moment, the crushing weight of the day lifted, replaced by a fierce, overwhelming surge of parental love. He stood there, holding his daughter's hand, silently promising her the world.
His quiet moment was shattered by the harsh vibration of his cell phone in his pocket. Reluctantly, Harry slipped his finger from Lily’s grasp, whispered a final promise, and stepped out into the hallway.
He pulled the phone out. It was Frank.
"Tell me you have something," Harry answered, keeping his voice low so as not to disturb the ward.
"I have something, Harry, but you aren't going to like it," Frank said, his tone grim. "I secured the servers at the Foundation. I pulled the footage from the grand foyer."
"And?"
"There's a glitch," Frank replied. "Exactly thirty seconds of footage is missing, right at the moment Chloe went over the edge. It cuts from her walking toward the stairs to her hitting the bottom landing. The files have been scrubbed."
Harry’s grip on the phone tightened until his knuckles turned white. "Someone wiped it."
"Yeah. And you need physical access to the server room to execute a deletion like that without triggering the off-site cloud backup alarm," Frank explained. "I checked the keycard logs. Guess whose card was swiped at the server room door ten minutes after the ambulance left?"
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Harry closed his eyes, a cold, hard knot forming in his stomach. "Arthur."
"Bingo," Frank said. "He’s covering his tracks, Harry. What do you want to do?"
