Page 41 of Baby Me

“I got you.”

“Your old lady good?” I asked, remembering why he must have been at the hospital to begin with.

“Yeah, she’s in radiology getting scan. Hoping everything’s clear again, but they wanted to be sure.”

“Hope like fuck my Coral can get that all clear before too long, as well.”

“We’re all praying for that, Tripp.”

Chapter 18

Davina

I woke up to a full-body chill. It wasn’t the kind that signified a person was cold. No, this was the type of chill that signaled there was a predator nearby, a fire, or some other catastrophe headed your way.

When my eyes drifted open, it was to see a nurse staring at my daughter with far too much interest. It seemed as though she was memorizing or cataloging her features as the woman slipped closer. Just as she reached for Coral’s IV, she hesitated and turned to see me watching her.

I didn’t even get to ask what she was doing before she startled and began to backpedal out of the room. It took me aback so much that I immediately reached for the nurse call button on the side of my daughter’s crib.

“Can we help you?”

“There was just a nurse in here behaving oddly. Please, send someone in here. Not the nurse who was just here, though. I think she may have been trying to do something to my daughter.”

Before I could get another word out an alarm blared over the hospital’s announcement system. “Code Pink has been issued. Code Pink.”

A nurse ran into the room and shut the door behind her immediately. I noticed a security officer stationed himself outside the door before she made her way over to me. “Someone from security will be here in a moment to take your statement. Can you describe the woman who was just in your room?”

“She had long brown hair, but it looked weird, like maybe it wasn’t sitting right on her head. She was about average height for a woman and…” I was frustrated with myself because I couldn’t remember much else. “I just woke up and saw her standing there looking at my daughter before she grabbed her IV line. When she noticed I was awake, she ran out of the room.”

“Do you remember what she was wearing?”

“Basic blue scrubs. She had a mask on, but it wasn’t pulled up on her face, it was just dangling around her neck.”

“Okay, that’s good.” The woman pulled out her cell phone and started talking to someone on the other end of the line. She gave them the description I’d just shot off and then offered a tiny smile to me. “I know you’re scared right now, but we have everyone in the hospital looking out for this woman. She was not a nurse, at least not the one assigned to your daughter – as that’s me and I was standing at the nurse’s station when you hit the call button. We have a code pink up throughout the hospital right now, it’s basically like an inhouse Amber Alert system. Even though your daughter wasn’t taken, we are having security watch all the exits and the security cameras are all recording. Everyone will have to show ID and explain who they are here to see to access any floors beyond the first floor where emergency is.”

“Okay. I still don’t understand how some woman pretending to be a nurse could be in here. Why would anyone want to hurt my daughter?”

“I can explain that.” I turned to see Tripp coming through the doorway with the security guard following behind him.

“Sir, you can’t go in without showing your ID.”

“It’s okay, he’s her father,” I called out. The security guard didn’t seem happy to be dismissed but still walked back out to stand guard in the hallway once more.

“What happened?”

The nurse and I filled Tripp in on what I woke up to and what the hospital was doing to try to locate the woman. Tripp wasted no time in getting his phone out and shooting off several messages via text. It wasn’t until he was done that he asked the nurse to excuse us for a minute, so that we could have a conversation in private.

Tripp explained what he had learned from June’s cousin and Scout, who had apparently had the woman under investigation on orders of her President. “So, you knew that she might come here?”

“I didn’t think she could gain access to the floor anymore because the nurses caught her once before and chased her off when she attempted to follow us up here. We thought… I thought that we had it handled. Then Scout told me just a bit ago that they didn’t have eyes on June and Anna told me that no one in her family had seen or spoken to her cousin for a couple days. Plus, June’s father is suddenly on his death bed in this very hospital, and Mack thinks that isn’t the coincidence it seems to be.” Tripp scraped his hands through his hair and then yanked at his beard in frustration.

“I should have told you all this, but you have so much to worry about already with Coral. I didn’t want to burden you with a problem that I brought into the mix.”

My anger deflated immediately as I moved closer so that I could wrap my arms around Tripp.

We snuggled into one another for a few minutes before I turned my head up to look into his eyes. “Thank you for trying to give me peace, but I need to know when my daughter might be in danger. If that weird feeling hadn’t woken me up, there’s no telling what she might have done to my baby girl while I slept there unaware.”

“Thank fuck for your feeling, whatever it was, waking you. Maybe it was Coral’s angel.”

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