The group seems to follow in some sort of order of seniority, Blumenthal at the lead.

The hell with it. I’m on this case, too. I’m the one who knows how to deliver babies.

I push my way to the front of the pack. We make our way, stumbling through a jungle of broken desk chairs, cartons of old glass syringes, office clipboards. The smell. Jesus Christ, the smell.

Another yells, “Hurry up, for Chrissake. Will you just hurry up?”

Blumenthal and I look quickly at each other. We keep moving. We are like a crazy lunatic parade wending its way through the disgusting basement room. We should ignore the smells, the screeching, the filthy floors.

My instincts kick in again. I have a miserable feeling that the nightmare is just beginning.

Chapter 14

Chapter 14

KATRA KOVAC IS SPREAD unconscious on the narrow bed of another discarded MRI machine. She is a dead or near-dead body in a deserted tunnel. She is almost naked. Only a bloodstained hospital gown is scrunched up around her neck.

“Jesus Christ!” says one of the police officers. He took the words out of everyone’s mouths.

Some of the group turns away. Tracy Anne checks Katra’s neck for a pulse. She’s got one.

I look at the blood-covered belly of the motionless woman. Blood is still seeping in small rivulets down over her sides, puddling on the floor.

Alarms ring. Sirens sound. Somewhere in the distance we can hear loud, fast clattering feet. Nurses and doctors appear in the basement. The goddamn rats won’t shut up; it’s as if they know something terrible has happened. We’re in a hospital, but no one has brought a medical emergency kit. One police officer rips off his shirt to staunch the blood. Orderlies and two doctors rush in with padding and surgical staplers. Hands covered in plastic gloves reach in and slip an IV needle into Katra’s arm. An oxygen tube is now dangling from her nose.

“Don’t transfer her to a gurney,” a voice yells. It is unmistakably Sarkar’s voice.

“Move her on the bed of the machine. Move the bed with her,” I yell.

Now I suddenly think that Sarkar, Tracy Anne, and I are most likely the only ones present who can tell exactly what has happened: Katra Kovac, nine months pregnant, has been slit open. Her baby has been taken.

The procedure—it’s a disgusting lie to confuse this butchery with the term C-section—has left the mother barely clinging to life. And the baby? Who in hell knows what has become of the baby, this baby who was literally ripped from its mother’s womb.