CHAPTER 4: THE RIDE TO SAFETY
We moved as one group—paramedics leading with Leo, Sophia leaning on me as we walked out the door, officers escorting Eleanor and Audrey to the patrol cars. The ambulance ride was quiet, broken only by the steady beep of monitors tracking Leo’s heart rate. Sophia sat pressed against my side, gripping my hand so tight I could feel her nails digging into my skin.
“I thought you’d never believe me,” she whispered. “I thought they’d make you think I’d lost my mind.”
“I knew something was wrong the second your texts stopped sounding like you,” I told her. “I know you, Sophia. I know how you talk, how you care, how you never give up without a fight. The day you stopped using commas was the day I started calling in every favor I ever earned.”
At the hospital, Dr. Carter was waiting right at the entrance. They wheeled Leo straight into treatment, running IV fluids and monitoring his breathing constantly. Sophia sat beside the incubator the whole time, singing softly to him even when he was too tired to open his eyes.
By dawn, the fever had broken. It came down slowly, half a degree at a time, but the flush faded from his cheeks and his breathing grew steady. When I reached through the bars to touch his hand, his tiny fingers curled around mine.
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