He flipped through the pages.
The color drained from his face.
“This isn’t what I signed.”
“Your signature is there,” I said.
“It was a single-page hospital form. Blank spaces for guardian names. Mom said she’d have Karen listed as backup because she lives nearby.”
My voice became dangerously quiet.
“You signed a document you did not read?”
“I was outside the operating room. They were taking you away. She said—”
“You signed something while I was bleeding?”
“I thought you were dying.”
The last word broke.
For a moment, I saw him as he had been hours earlier: pale, shaking, one hand pressed to the operating-room window while they wheeled me away.
Then another thought arrived.
“Why would the hospital give the form to your mother?”
Ethan looked at Margaret.
“She said Dr. Hale sent it.”
Dr. Miriam Hale had been my obstetrician for seven months.
She had delivered both twins.
She had never met Margaret.
A chill moved through me.
“Chief Ruiz,” I said, “I want these documents preserved as evidence. Do not allow anyone to touch the wet pages. Contact hospital legal counsel and the United States Marshals Service.”
Margaret recoiled.
“The Marshals?”
“Yes.”
“For a family disagreement?”
“For suspected forgery, attempted custodial interference, assault, fraudulent notarization, and conspiracy to deprive a parent of lawful custody.”
Each charge landed like a stone.
Margaret’s face went slack.
“This is grotesque. Ethan, make her stop.”
He kept staring at the papers.
“You told me it was a hospital form.”
“I was helping.”
“You told me Olivia might not survive.”
“The doctors were worried.”
“No doctor spoke to you.”
“I heard things.”
“From whom?”
Margaret’s eyes moved toward the door.
Ruiz noticed.
“So did I,” I said.
He stepped in front of it.
“No one leaves.”
Margaret lifted her chin.
“You cannot hold me without cause.”
“You struck a patient in front of her newborn child,” Ruiz replied. “The room is under continuous video monitoring.”
Her confidence fractured.
She looked toward a dark glass dome in the ceiling corner.
The camera.
In a hospital suite designed for high-profile patients, security footage was standard.
