Chapter 3 - The Cargo Bay Escape
The loading dock was a cavernous, concrete labyrinth filled with towering stacks of medical waste bins, empty linen carts, and the idling diesel engine of a white delivery van.
Through the rear doors of the van, a rugged-looking man in a high-visibility safety vest jumped down, his eyes darting quickly around the dim space before landing on Leah and the bassinet.
“You Leah?” he asked in a low, gravelly voice.
“Yes,” Leah breathed, rushing forward.
“Mae called me. Move fast—the security gates are dropping across the main lot right now,” the driver said, grabbing the front of the bassinet to help her lift it up into the cargo bed.
Leah climbed in after her son, pulling the baby close to her chest as the van’s doors slammed shut, plunging them into near-total darkness save for the pale light filtering through the front cab. The vehicle lurched backward, tires screeching against the wet pavement as the driver slammed on the gas, navigating the winding subterranean exit ramps of Briar Glen Hospital.
Inside the dark van, Leah finally allowed herself to exhale. She pulled the pale blue blanket back just enough to check on her son. He was still sleeping peacefully, his tiny chest rising and falling in a steady, calming rhythm.
We’re out, she told herself. We’re out of the building.
But as her adrenaline began to subside, the harsh reality of her situation settled heavily onto her shoulders. She had no money, no phone—which she had left charging on her hospital nightstand before Mae grabbed her—and no car. Her apartment in Columbus was under Nathan’s name, and the moment he realized she had escaped, it would be the first place he and Doreen would look.
She couldn't go home. She couldn't call her parents, who were currently retired in a remote part of rural Montana with limited cell service.
Who can I trust? she thought, frantically running through the list of her friends in the city. Most of them were mutual acquaintances she had met through Nathan’s corporate social circle—people who would fold under the slightest pressure from Doreen Prescott.
Then, a name flashed into her mind.
Dr. Celia Rusk’s assistant—a young nurse named Chloe who had pulled Leah aside during her initial admission intake and whispered, “Don't drink the water they bring you from the private pantry.”
At the time, Leah hadn't understood the warning. Now, sitting in the back of a bouncing delivery van, the terrifying implication hit her with full force: they had been drugging her water to induce symptoms of mental confusion and lethargy, building a medical paper trail to justify the psychiatric hold.
Chloe had known what was happening. And Chloe had hated Doreen’s grip on the clinic.
“Hey, driver!” Leah called out, banging softly on the partition separating the cargo area from the cab. “Where are we headed?”
“Safe house about twenty miles north of the city,” the driver shouted back over the roar of the engine. “ Mae’s instructions. It’s an old farmhouse belonging to an uncle of mine who’s currently overseas. Nobody goes out there.”
“Can you stop at a public payphone or a convenience store first?” Leah pleaded. “I need to make one call. It’s a matter of life and death.”
May you like
“Negative, ma’am,” the driver replied flatly. “If I stop anywhere before we clear the county line, the automatic plate readers on the highway patrol cruisers will flag this van. Doreen Prescott has friends in the state police department. You want to keep that boy? We don't stop for nothing.”
Leah bit her lip, falling back against a stack of cardboard boxes. He was right. Every second they spent on the road was a race against a multi-million-dollar machine controlled by a woman who viewed human lives as disposable collateral.
