Chapter 6 - The Interloper in the Corridor
The entire NICU held its breath.
The two security guards stepped forward, their boots squeaking against the linoleum floor. Social worker Sarah Jenkins—a stern-faced woman with hair pulled back into a severe bun—stepped beside Dr. Vance, holding out an emergency temporary custody warrant.
"Mr. Wade Turner?" Jenkins demanded, peering over her glasses. "By order of the county child welfare division, you are trespassing in a restricted medical facility with an unassigned minor. Hand Baby Boy Miller over to hospital staff immediately, or we will have local law enforcement charge you with child abduction."
Wade didn't stand up. He slowly lowered his chin, wrapping his massive arms a fraction tighter around the sleeping infant, shielding him from the harsh fluorescent glare and the hostile faces surrounding them.
"Abduction?" Wade’s voice wasn't loud, but it carried a chilling, seismic resonance that made Dr. Vance involuntarily take half a step backward. "You can't abduct a child that nobody wanted, lady. I sat here for fourteen hours while your nurses were drowning in paperwork and your doctors were hiding in glass offices. Where were you when his heart rate dropped at midnight? Where were you when he cried himself hoarse because nobody had touched him in three days?"
"That is entirely irrelevant to your legal status here," Jenkins snapped, waving the custody paper in the air. "You have no biological claim, no foster certification, and a documented history of civil disobedience. Security, remove him."
The two guards lunged forward, reaching for Wade’s shoulders.
"Don't touch him!" I screamed, jumping between Wade and the guards. "If you wrench that baby out of his arms right now while he's sleeping, you risk throwing the infant into severe neurological shock! Look at his monitors!"
Dr. Vance scoffed. "Nurse Evans, you are severely compromising your career—"
"My career isn't what's on trial here, Dr. Vance!" I cut him off, my voice shaking with righteous fury. "You want to throw him out? Fine! But you explain to the state board why this hospital ignored a fifteen-year-old wrongful death settlement and tried to dump an abandoned infant into an overloaded foster system without even running a DNA registry check!"
The word DNA hung in the air like a live wire.
Dr. Vance froze, blinking in confusion. "What are you talking about?"
Wade slowly lifted his head, his eyes burning with an eerie, calculated calm. He reached into the pocket of his jeans with one hand—carefully maintaining his hold on the baby with the other—and pulled out a crumpled, sealed legal envelope.
"You think I just wandered in here by accident yesterday?" Wade asked quietly. "You think a biker happens to pick bed nine out of forty incubators in this city?"
May you like
He tossed the envelope onto the small medical tray beside the rocking chair.
"Open it, Doc," Wade challenged. "That’s a court-ordered genetic comparison between Baby Boy Miller and the biological tissue samples this hospital illegally archived from my son fifteen years ago."
