Chapter 4 - THE TRANSFER ORDER
I bypassed the ICU entirely.
The stairwell was cold, the heavy concrete echoing with the squeak of my wheelchair brakes. I knew the hospital’s layout better than I knew my own house. If a psychiatric hold had been issued, security would lock down the upper floors first, assuming I would return to my bed or the NICU.
They wouldn't expect a hemorrhaging, postpartum woman to head straight for the one place she had absolute power.
The Emergency Department.
I wheeled myself through the basement service corridor, the pain in my abdomen radiating into a blinding, white-hot agony. I gritted my teeth, tasting blood where I had bitten my own lip.
I reached the staff entrance to the ER. The double doors swung open, dropping me into the familiar, chaotic symphony of trauma alarms, shouting nurses, and the smell of antiseptic.
"Chief!" Nurse Miller, a veteran trauma nurse who had worked beside me for a decade, dropped a stack of charts when she saw me.
She rushed over, her eyes wide with horror as she took in my pale face and the blood beginning to seep through my hospital gown. "Dr. Palmer, what are you doing out of bed? We heard you ruptured!"
"Miller, listen to me," I gasped, grabbing her arm with a grip that made her wince. "Bradley is trying to initiate a 72-hour psych hold on me. He took my baby. He’s transferring him to St. Jude’s."
Miller’s face hardened instantly. In the ER, loyalty was forged in blood and exhaustion. We were an army, and I was their general.
"What do you need?" she asked, not questioning me for a single second.
"I need Dr. Evans. And I need a secure phone line that bypassing the hospital switchboard."
"Evans is in Trauma Bay 2," Miller said, quickly spinning my wheelchair behind the central nurses' station, hiding me from the main security cameras. "I'll get him."
Two minutes later, Dr. Evans burst behind the counter. The burly, gray-haired surgeon crouched beside my wheelchair, his face tight with anger.
"Allison, what the hell is Bradley doing?" Evans demanded in a low whisper. "I just saw security heading up to the ICU with a straightjacket protocol."
"He’s stealing my son, Marcus," I choked out, the tears finally breaking through my rage. "He’s transferring him to St. Jude’s, and he’s using Hannah Knox’s father to strip my medical rights."
Dr. Evans’s eyes narrowed at the mention of the board chairman. "Knox. That explains the audit."
"What audit?" I asked.
Evans reached into his scrub pocket and pulled out a crumpled, sealed envelope. "I pulled this from Bradley’s locker an hour ago when I went to confront him about the delivery room. I shouldn't have opened it, but I knew something was deeply wrong."
He handed me the envelope.
I pulled out a stack of financial documents. They weren't hospital records. They were private banking statements for Bradley's independent surgical practice—a venture he had started three years ago and claimed was thriving.
The numbers were highlighted in glaring red ink.
Bradley was nearly four million dollars in debt. He had taken out massive, high-interest loans to cover a string of malpractice settlements he had settled out of court, completely hiding them from his insurance and from me.
"He’s bankrupt," I whispered, staring at the ruin of my husband’s career.
"Worse," Evans said grimly. "Look at the final page."
I flipped to the back. It was a life insurance policy.
My life insurance policy.
The payout was five million dollars. In the event of my death, the funds would immediately transfer to a private trust controlled solely by Bradley Jenkins.
The air vanished from my lungs.
He didn't turn off the epidural to punish me for his ego.
He turned it off because he needed me to die.
A natural delivery of a ten-pound baby with a known history of pelvic disproportion was a calculated risk. When I ruptured, it was exactly what he had prayed for. If Dr. Evans hadn't burst into the room and ordered the blood transfusions, Bradley would have let me bleed out on that table, playing the role of the tragic, grieving widower.
Hannah wasn't just a mistress. She was his backup plan. By aligning himself with the board chairman’s daughter, he guaranteed his protection within the hospital if any questions arose about my death.
"He tried to murder me," I said, the words tasting like ash in my mouth.
"And now he’s trying to bury you in a psych ward so you can't testify against him," Evans concluded. "Allison, if they get that straightjacket on you, Knox will ensure you are heavily sedated. You’ll never see your son again."
"I need to stop that ambulance," I said, my voice eerily calm. "If Bradley gets to St. Jude’s, he’ll disappear with the baby."
"The ambulance left fifteen minutes ago," Miller interjected, checking the dispatch log on the computer. "Unit 42. Private transport."
"Call dispatch," I ordered. "Tell them it’s a Code Black. Medical kidnapping. Divert Unit 42 back to this ER immediately."
Miller hesitated. "Chief, dispatch requires board authorization for a Code Black."
I looked down at my lap. My hands were shaking, but not from fear.
"I don't need the board," I said, reaching into the pocket of the heavy winter coat Dr. Evans had draped over my shoulders. My fingers brushed against something stiff.
I pulled it out.
It was a pair of glossy, printed boarding passes.
I stared at them. They had fallen out of Bradley’s locker along with the financial documents.
They were first-class tickets to Geneva, Switzerland. Departing tonight at 11:00 PM.
One ticket for Bradley Jenkins.
One ticket for Hannah Knox.
And a lap-infant ticket attached.
Answer one, open two. Bradley wasn't taking the baby to St. Jude’s for cardiac care. The ambulance was a decoy. He was driving the ambulance straight to the private airfield.
"He’s not going to the hospital," I realized, the horrifying truth slamming into me. "He’s leaving the country tonight."
"Allison," Evans said, his voice urgent. "Security is coming. Two guards just stepped off the elevator."
I looked through the glass of the nurses' station. Two burly security guards, holding a set of heavy restraints, were marching down the ER corridor, flanked by a psychiatric evaluation doctor.
"Miller," I said, my voice turning into the steel blade that commanded the trauma bay. "Lock down the ER doors. Code Silver protocol. Nobody gets in or out without my authorization."
Miller grinned fiercely. She slammed her hand down on the large red button under the desk.
Heavy steel security shutters instantly crashed down over the emergency room entrances, sealing us inside and locking the psychiatric team out in the hallway.
"Dr. Evans," I continued, turning to my mentor. "Call the police. Tell them to intercept a stolen ambulance heading for the Westchester private airfield."
I gripped the wheels of my chair and pushed myself toward the trauma bay.
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Bradley thought I was a broken, hysterical victim.
He was about to find out exactly what happens when you try to kill an ER doctor in her own hospital.
