Page 3 of Vicarious

A sole nurse with a wheelchair comes out. Which would have been fine before. But now that it’s clear something much more dire is going on, she pages a team on sight. In the meantime, we get Phae in the wheelchair, and I hold her up so that she doesn’t tip over.

We meet the team in the hall, ready to take her the operating room.

“Dele,” Phae says as they lift her onto the bed.

“I’m here,” I assure.

She reaches for me and says, “Dele. Dele, you have to… you have to tell Adrian that…”

She’s suddenly convulsing and the doctors are rushing her away.

I follow all the way to the operating room doors before being told that I can’t come in, leaving me to pace nervously outside the door.

It feels like hours before anything happens. But then out the operating room come two rolling hospital cribs with two babies tightly bundled inside.

I get little more than a glance of them before one of the doctors comes out and says, “You’re authorized to receive information about the patient, correct?”

“I’m her sister,” I lie without thinking. “Is she okay?”

“We’ve done everything we can. We’re still doing everything we can, but…”

A doctor bursts through the door, ushering the other doctor inside. It’s chaos. But in the midst of all that, I hear the long flat beep of the heart monitor. I walk into the room, only to immediately be ushered out the room.

But it’s too late. I hear the shout of, “We lost her. Call it.”

“Time of death 6:42pm.”

A normal person would fall apart right now. A normal person would have the luxury of falling apart right now. I don’t. There’s no telling how far Stephen Pray’s reach goes. No telling how many authorities he’s bought off. How many people he has in all positions looking for me and Phae. Who’s already told him that he saw us walk through these hospital doors.

Right now, only three truths matter.

Phae’s dead.

Adrian is probably dead.

Their children aren’t safe here.

My training kicks in, and I compartmentalize my feelings, my terror, my dismay, my grief. All of that can be dealt with later. Right now, the task at hand. Get the children out of here. Get across the border to Canada.

First things first, I take note of the color scrubs that the neonatal nurses wear. A pale pink. Then I find my way into their lockers by acting like I supposed to be there and no one stops me. It takes three lockers before I find a spare pair of pink scrubs to put over my clothes along with an extra name tag. My hair is barely to my chin, but long enough to be in the way, so I rummage around for a ponytail holder to pull it back. On the way out, I steal an empty duffle bag from one of the lockers.

When I enter the nursery, I grab a clipboard to pretend to be doing something while eying the other nurse in the room and going through scenarios to get her to leave the room.

Turns out I don’t have to try.

“Oh, thank God,” she says. “I’m so ready for shift change it’s not even funny.”

“Long day?” I ask casually, not bothering to correct her.

“Not until the last patient came in. Right before shift change.”

She ushers me over to two cribs sitting next to each other.

Phae’s twins.

“The mother was lost on the operating table. Would have lost them too if her sister had brought her in any later. But they’re healthy. Breathing on their own. Greedy little things. Had no problem sucking down their bottles,” she says with a laugh. “Lucky you get to spend your shift with them.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Lucky.”

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