Chapter 17 - The River Tunnel
Leah ran toward the scream.
The service tunnel sloped beneath the hospital toward the Scioto River drainage system. Water covered the floor to her ankles.
“Nathan!”
A flashlight beam moved ahead.
She found him against the wall, blood on his forehead.
“I’m okay.”
“You’re not.”
“Mom hit me with a pipe.”
A gunshot echoed down the tunnel.
They both ducked.
Nathan looked at Leah. “Why did you come back for me?”
“I didn’t. I came to make sure she doesn’t hurt anyone else.”
The answer landed hard.
He nodded.
“Fair.”
They followed the tunnel to an old pump station.
Doreen stood beside a maintenance skiff tied to the river gate.
Dr. Rusk was with her, coughing from smoke.
“You said the records were handled!” Doreen shouted.
“They were until your daughter-in-law started playing detective!”
Doreen raised the gun toward Rusk.
“You were paid to be competent.”
Rusk laughed bitterly. “And you were paid by desperate couples for babies!”
Leah lifted her phone and recorded.
Nathan whispered, “Keep them talking.”
But Rusk saw them.
“There!”
Doreen turned.
Nathan stepped in front of Leah.
“Mom, put it down.”
“You betrayed me.”
“No. I stopped obeying you.”
Doreen’s hand shook.
“I saved you your whole life.”
“You owned me my whole life.”
For the first time, Nathan sounded like a man Leah might once have trusted.
Rusk suddenly grabbed for the boat.
Doreen swung toward her.
Nathan charged.
The gun fired.
Nathan fell into the water.
Leah screamed his name.
The current pulled him toward the open river gate.
Exactly like the dream.
She ran to the edge.
Nathan reached for a rusted chain.
Missed.
May you like
Smoke thickened so quickly that the old wing seemed to shrink around them. Sprinklers coughed brown water from the ceiling. Alarms flashed red across the faces of women whose names remained printed on half-burned files scattered across the floor. Leah wanted to gather every page, but Mae grabbed her wrist. "People first," she said. That sentence cut through everything. Doreen had spent years treating children and mothers like assets, evidence, liabilities, or opportunities. Mae reduced the entire crisis to the one rule Doreen had forgotten: people first.
And disappeared beneath the black water.
