Chapter 3 - A Safe Room
By noon, Celia was in a safe apartment owned by a domestic-violence nonprofit Helena had never heard of before that morning.
The apartment was on the third floor of a brick building above a bakery. It had yellow curtains, a sofa with a torn arm, and a refrigerator covered in children’s drawings. A volunteer named Marisol had stocked it with soup, crackers, and three kinds of ginger ale.
“You can stay as long as you need,” Marisol said.
“What if he finds me?” Celia asked.
“He won’t.”
Marisol said it without false confidence. She said it like a person who had planned for the possibility.
Helena admired her immediately.
Outside, a delivery truck groaned down the street. Celia watched it from behind the curtain.
“He knows every hospital administrator in the state,” she said.
“He doesn’t know Marisol.”
“He knows my phone.”
“We’ll replace it.”
“He knows my passwords.”
“We’ll change those.”
“He knows me.”
Helena sat beside her. “That is the part he cannot use forever.”
Celia looked at her. “You sound certain.”
“I’m practicing.”
For the first time since the kitchen, Celia smiled.
The smile vanished when Helena’s phone rang. It was Lila.
“Adrian filed an emergency petition,” Lila said.
“For what?”
“Temporary control of Celia’s medical decisions. He claims you are interfering with care and that Celia is experiencing pregnancy-related paranoia.”
Helena stood. “He is trying to have her declared incompetent.”
“He’s trying to get a judge to order an evaluation.”
“Can he do that?”
“He can ask.”
“And if the judge believes him?”
“We oppose it.”
“With what?”
“Priya’s examination. The photographs. Your statement.”
“That is not enough.”
“It is a beginning.”
After the call, Celia stared at the floor.
“He’ll win,” she said.
“No.”
“He has experts.”
“So do we.”
“He has money.”
“So do the people who are afraid of losing it.”
“Mom.”
Helena stopped.
“Don’t make this about your old war with him.”
The words hurt because they were true enough to hurt.
Helena had disliked Adrian before she had evidence. He had challenged her at board dinners, called her instincts “performative,” and once told Celia that her mother confused suspicion with intelligence. Helena had dismissed him as arrogant. She had not seen the danger until it was printed on Celia’s skin.
“This is not about me,” Helena said. “It is about believing you.”
“Then believe me when I say I don’t know how to fight him.”
“You don’t have to fight him alone.”
That afternoon, Priya came to the apartment with a paper bag and a sealed envelope.
“The hospital’s risk department gave me this,” she said.
Inside the envelope were printed ultrasound images. The dates were the same as the electronic records, but the measurements were different.
“Why would someone change them?” Celia asked.
“To make the baby appear smaller or larger?” Helena asked.
“In this case, smaller,” Priya said. “The original images suggest the baby was measuring ahead. The altered entries made the growth look ordinary.”
“Why would that matter?”
Priya looked at Celia. “Because the Vale network has been enrolling patients in a program called GentleStart. The program claims to reduce unnecessary interventions. If babies measure large, doctors may recommend earlier delivery. Adrian’s published results depend on fewer inductions and fewer surgical births.”
“You’re saying he changed the records to protect his statistics?”
“I’m saying someone did.”
The apartment buzzer sounded.
Everyone froze.
Marisol answered the intercom. Her voice was muffled, then sharp.
“Who are you?”
She returned a moment later, holding a courier envelope.
“It was left downstairs.”
The envelope was addressed to Celia in Adrian’s handwriting.
Helena opened it while Priya watched.
Inside was a single sheet of paper.
You think a locked door changes what happens in a delivery room.
It does not.
May you like
At the bottom, Adrian had written a time and a place: Tomorrow. St. Catherine’s. Come alone.
On the back was a photograph of the safe apartment’s front entrance.
