The hospital corridors vibrated with urgency, the rattling of a stretcher rolling across polished tiles echoing like a drumbeat of fate. The sharp, repetitive clink of the IV bag tapping against its metal pole rose above the noise, piercing the silence of a nearby room. In that room lay Iris, her body motionless, her mind trapped in its fragile prison. To her, every sound outside her door was amplified: the shouts of nurses, the squeal of wheels, the fading cries of command. And as the stretcher grew distant, so too did her heartbeat—slower, heavier, like a clock dragging its final seconds.
Meanwhile, down another hallway, Paula stepped aside from the frantic procession. She pressed a trembling hand against the door of Martha's office before pushing it open. The room smelled faintly of disinfectant and ink, a refuge carved out of chaos. On the desk, Martha sat quietly, her gaze fixed on a small black cage where her mockingbird danced in restless hops, its claws tapping softly against the bars, wings fluttering in short bursts as though yearning for release.
The intrusion shattered the fragile stillness.
"Doctor..." Paula's voice cracked, carrying both dread and urgency. "We have a new patient."
Martha turned, reluctant to let go of her small companion. She shut the cage gently, the mockingbird's beak striking once against the bars as though in protest. Her tone, at first, was steady. "Who is it?"
Paula's throat tightened. The words came heavy, reluctant. "It's your brother, Doctor."
The air collapsed around Martha. Her body froze, her eyes widening as if her own pulse had stopped. Then she rushed past Paula, through the door, down the corridor that had become an artery of grief. She found him there—Edwards—stripped of strength, his clothes folded on a chair, his body splayed on the operating table. His skin was mottled with blood, his back torn apart by six bullet wounds, his side split by one more, and three punctures in his legs. His eyes, wild and clouded, flickered toward her.
Martha's breath caught. For the first time in her long career, her hands trembled. For the first time, she had no answer. She asked the room, her voice thin as a whisper:
"Condition of the patient?"
"Ten bullet wounds," Paula replied, her hands already gloved, already trembling though her fingers moved with precision. "Back, ribs, quadriceps. He's in critical condition... but conscious."
Edwards tried to rise. His muscles tensed against the weight of pain. The doctors shoved him gently back down, turning him onto his stomach. His breath rasped.
"Don't move," Martha commanded, her voice breaking, a plea more than an order.
But Edwards ignored the pain long enough to rasp the only words he cared for: "Sarah. Tell me where Sarah is. That's all I need to know."
The first bullet was drawn from his flesh, Paula's scalpel slicing through layers of skin, her forceps clamping tight. Edwards' scream reverberated through the sterile chamber. Blood bubbled, then drained, carrying with it the weight of every sin and crime. It was as though the guilt itself seeped from his pores, staining the sheets, darkening the floor. Each wound exhaled a secret. Each drop of blood spoke of sacrifice.
Martha staggered back, the sound of her brother's agony burrowing into her. Her chest caved with helplessness, her vision blurred. She turned, fleeing the room before her collapse could mirror his.
"Doctor, where are you going?" Paula cried.
"Take care of him," Martha muttered, never looking back. Her footsteps echoed hollow through the hallway.
In the waiting room, chaos bloomed anew. Sarah's cries pierced through the sterile air, shrill, raw, unbearable. She had once wept in silence, but now her sobs had grown into a storm. She was no longer a child mourning vaguely—she was a child tethered to someone, to Edwards, and the tether was breaking.
Her grandmother Kimberly wrapped her arms around her, rocking gently. "Hush, Sarah. He'll be fine. He will..."
But Sarah thrashed, twisting in her grandmother's grip. "Let me go! I want to be with him! Let me go!"
Kimberly held tighter, desperation cracking her voice. "Please, Sarah, calm down—"
"No!" Sarah screamed, the force of her words shaking the air. In her fury, she slammed her forehead into her grandmother's face. Kimberly staggered, clutching her brow, pain flooding her eyes.
"You're nothing but a liar!" Sarah howled. "You never protected me! You don't love me! Let me go! I want Edwards! I want to escape!"
Her small frame twisted violently, finally slipping free. Kimberly collapsed into a chair, her hands over her wounded head, tears carving rivers down her cheeks. "No one loves me... no one loves me..." she whispered again and again, her voice shrinking into emptiness.
Sarah ran, streaks of blood seeping from the cut on her forehead, her sobs trailing like broken glass behind her. She ran not just through corridors but through the very fabric of her childhood, tearing herself from innocence, fleeing into a world that demanded more than a child could bear.
Outside, near the entrance, Martha leaned against a pillar, her body trembling without the pills she had relied upon for so long. She felt hollow, as though she too were teetering on the edge of life and death, pulled toward her brother's fate.
And then Sarah appeared, rushing into her arms.
"Come here," Martha whispered, catching the child with a strength born not of muscle but of despair. Sarah fought her at first, thrashing, crying. "I want to go! Let me go!"
Martha's grip tightened, unyielding. "Listen to me, child. Do not let tears fill your pores. Do you understand? Because even this pain—this nightmare—is imagination. Think of it... think of it!"
Sarah froze, her small fists clenched, her heart racing. Then she collapsed into Martha's embrace, her body shaking, her arms wrapping tightly around the woman who had become her anchor. In that embrace, a stillness descended.
At that exact moment, inside the operating room, Paula pulled the final bullet free from Edwards' torn flesh. His breathing steadied, shallow but present. His body, a battlefield, still clung stubbornly to life.
And in Iris's room, her monitor beeped into rhythm again. Her pulse stabilized, the storm of her silence easing into fragile calm.
A tear escaped Martha's eye, falling quietly. It touched the ground where moss had begun to sprout through the cracks of the hospital's foundations, soaking into the pores of green leaves. The tear shimmered against the moss as though binding grief to life, pain to growth.
And then, for one breathless instant, the entire world dimmed into gray.
The silence was not true silence—it was a mask, a veil stretched thin over the air. Behind a crumbling wall, half-swallowed by shadow, Richardson crouched with his revolver lowered to the ground. His breath came ragged, shallow, each inhale dragging across his throat like rusted wire. Below him, in the damp arteries of the city's underbelly, Paulie moved with Raphael and four others. Their boots splashed against the foul water, echoing like drums in a tomb. Richardson could hear them. He could feel the tremor of their presence through the stone.
"Raphael, you first," Paulie ordered.
Raphael said nothing. He simply pushed the heavy door open, the screech of its hinges cutting through the silence like a blade. Richardson's eyes flickered, and with the sharp instinct of prey cornered, he burst from hiding. He darted into the open road, the sudden figure of a hunted man breaking into flight.
Gunfire erupted. Raphael fired again and again, bullets splitting the air in furious pursuit. The group scattered, each man peeling off into his path like hounds unleashed. Paulie and two others pressed on through the sewer, the stench rising like rot, weapons glinting in their fists.
Paulie snapped open his walkie-talkie, his voice sharp. "He's on the road."
Static crackled before another voice cut in—the pilot. "On him."
A growl of an engine answered the call. Tires screeched as a black SUV roared to life, the machine a predator of steel. Richardson turned, saw it bearing down. His lungs burned, his feet hammered against the asphalt. He hurled himself over a fence, desperate, frantic.
The shot came clean—a bullet tearing through his ankle. Pain detonated through his body. He collapsed into a stranger's garden, a howl breaking from his lips. Grass darkened with blood, soaking greedily, staining the earth as though the ground itself were complicit.
On the porch, an elderly couple froze. They did not scream at Richardson. They screamed at the sight of their garden turned crimson, as though the sanctity of their small world had been violated. Richardson raised the revolver with a shaking hand and hissed at them, "Stay silent!" before limping on, clawing at the next fence, desperate to escape.
The SUV skidded to a halt. From it sprang Tommy, young and furious, his face alight with adrenaline. Raphael and two more followed, spilling into the house Richardson had forced his way through. The neighbors stood in shock, their mouths wide, their hands clutching each other. Raphael turned calmly, his gaze soft, and with a brief gesture told them: do not fear.
But the hunt pressed on.
Richardson stumbled into the street again, the world spinning. His revolver clattered to the pavement as an arm jutted suddenly from a sewer grate, a muzzle flashing. The bullet struck his arm, splitting muscle, sending shockwaves of agony down to his fingertips. He dropped the weapon, blood dripping from his sleeve.
Paulie emerged from the sewer with another man, their voices echoing like demons rising. "Come here, you filthy piece of shit!"
Richardson ran. He ran not with strength but with desperation, dragging himself toward the one place he had sworn never to return—the house. That cursed house. The house where it had all begun, where walls still whispered the screams of Iris.
The yellow police tape still clung to the doorframe like a fragile skin. Richardson ripped it aside, forcing his way in. Dust and silence clung to the air inside. But he had no time—shadows followed close.
They crashed through behind him. The hunters descended. Blows rained down like thunder, fists and boots striking flesh, forcing him onto the floorboards. And there, in cruel poetry, they beat him in the very spot where Iris had fallen, the echoes of her tragedy now reverberating through his body.
"Swallow your wife's blood!" Tommy spat, his voice venomous as he drove his boot into Richardson's ribs. "Feel what you made her feel, bastard!"
Paulie struck again, targeting the bullet wound in Richardson's arm. His kicks were merciless, each one tearing a new cry from his brother-in-arms turned traitor. Richardson groaned, tried to shield himself, but his strength was a memory.
Raphael arrived last, his presence calm yet terrible, like judgment itself. He watched the frenzy, then stepped closer, his eyes never leaving Richardson's. Paulie turned to him, breathless, his fists dripping with sweat and rage.
"What do we do with him now? We can't just beat him to death."
Paulie's chest rose and fell, his voice low, resolute. "I've got a place to keep him. Edwards will handle this. By my word, Edwards will be the one to pass the sentence."
At the mention of Edwards, Richardson's body stiffened. Fear rippled through his gaze, his eyes darting to Raphael. But Raphael only leaned down, whispering to Paulie before signaling to the others.
Tommy and Oscar grabbed Richardson, dragging him by his arms. His feet scraped across the wood, smearing more blood. They hauled him out, the night swallowing the cries that escaped his lips.
The SUV's trunk yawned open, its dark hollow waiting like a grave. Richardson thrashed weakly, his voice breaking into a plea. "Where are you taking me?!"
Tommy shoved him harder. "To your damnation, son of a bitch."
The metal door slammed shut.
And in the suffocating black of the trunk, Richardson was left to the company of his fear.
Meanwhile, Itziar, the keeper of her patients' grief and silent confessions, sat reclined in her worn armchair. The office smelled faintly of peppermint gum and paper, the kind of scent that lingered when thoughts refused to leave. Across from her, two chairs waited empty, their absence louder than any words. Between her fingers, a pencil spun in circles, restless as her mind.
On the screen of her computer, the schedule glowed with clinical indifference:
|16:00 – 17:00: Kimberly Fleming.|
The analog clock ticked on the wall, its hands dragging toward the hour with deliberate cruelty. The gum snapped in Itziar's mouth, the sound sharp against the quiet. Five minutes left. Five minutes until the end of a session that would never take place. Kimberly had chosen absence over confession, silence over dialogue. Not once, but twice.
Itziar sighed, sliding her glasses from her nose, setting them with care upon the desk. Her fingertips brushed her lips as though trying to trap a thought before it escaped. She pressed one key, and Kimberly's name dissolved from the screen—deleted, erased, as if she had never existed in the ledger of patients. "Another one gone," she whispered, not with malice, but with the fatigue of someone who carried too many secrets, none her own.
As Itziar exhaled, Martha inhaled. Somewhere across the city, the rhythm of hospital air and the stillness of a guarded room wrapped themselves around her. She stood at the edge of the Mockingbird's cell, her eyes narrowing at the sight of the caged figure, though her mind already drifted elsewhere. With a sudden surge of resolve, she turned, her steps deliberate. She crossed the sterile corridor to Edwards' room, where the man lay upright, his face pale yet stubborn, a body stitched together by will more than flesh.
The door opened. Martha entered, her posture firm, her eyes as sharp as her tone.
"Explain what happened, Mr. Edwards."
"You already know, sister..." Edwards' voice was hoarse, but steady, carrying the weight of someone who refused surrender.
Martha pulled a chair and sat beside the bed, her gaze fixed on the steady rhythm of his pulse displayed on the monitor. "Do you know what frightens me? Not the thought of losing you, no. What gnaws at me is the rage you ignite. You won't die easily, Edwards. That's what terrifies me. You will suffer, slowly, and each wound will drag you further down, little by little. A clean death would be mercy. But you... you are a man condemned to linger."
"I have veins enough for some things," Edwards murmured, a trace of defiance in his smile.
"Like what? The duty to raise a child you've endangered just by breathing her air? That girl's life is at risk because of you. Can't you see it?"
"When my partner has Richardson in his hands, he'll call me. I'll go there myself. I'll make him pay."
"You won't go anywhere, boy!" Martha's temper erupted. She rose to her feet, her voice cracking like a whip. "I will assign a nurse to this room, and you will not move. Do you hear me? Not one step!"
"Don't meddle in my affairs..."
"I'm tired!" Her voice wavered between fury and grief. "Do you hear me? Tired of your idiocy. Why don't you leave this damned business behind and focus on your real duty, until the day she opens her eyes?"
"It wasn't my choice that Richardson wanted me dead! And when his soldiers fired while I held Sarah—it wasn't my fault!" His voice broke, anguish spilling raw. "That bastard wants Sarah. He'll take her, hurt her, God help us..."
Martha fell into silence, the storm inside her softening for a moment. Seconds stretched long before she spoke again, quieter now. "Sarah is with her mother. She asked to be moved there, away from the waiting room. She said she needed peace. She is just a child, yet her heart thinks with more wisdom than most adults."
Edwards' shoulders sagged. His voice trembled into something close to surrender. "Just... bring me the phone from the waiting room. Please."
Martha hesitated, eyes narrowing in thought. At last, she nodded. "Fine." But before she stepped out, she paused at the door. "You have a family now, Edwards. A family right here. Do not abandon them for the sake of your own stubbornness."
Her footsteps faded into the hallway. Silence poured back into the room, thick and suffocating. Edwards stared at the ceiling, his jaw tight, his hands clenched. Then, in a surge of frustrated fury, he struck the bed with his fist, the sound sharp in the sterile air.
The blow did nothing to ease the weight pressing down on him. The weight of guilt, of anger, of a family he wasn't sure he deserved—but could no longer afford to lose.
Martha moved swiftly through the hushed corridors of the hospital, her shoes tapping faintly on the linoleum. The scent of antiseptic lingered, sharp as memory itself. She stopped when she crossed paths with Paula, who carried a tray down another hallway.
"Stay with Edwards until the next shift change, alright?" Martha's tone was clipped but steady.
"Understood... I was just about to bring this to Mr. Ontario—"
"I'll take it. Do as I said."
Paula hesitated only a second before obeying, vanishing toward Edwards' room with hurried steps. Left alone, Martha held the water bag in her hands, its cold weight pressing into her palms. Her eyes drifted toward a wide window where the pale light of late afternoon streamed in, revealing Iris's room beyond the glass.
Inside, Sarah sat slumped in a chair, her thin elbows resting against the edge of her mother's bed. The girl's gaze never left Iris, who lay motionless, her chest rising with shallow breaths. Sarah gripped a scrap of paper, a pencil trembling in her hand. Her small fingers struggled to shape the words.
"Do you like it this way, Mother?" she whispered, holding up the sheet toward the sleeping figure. The letters sprawled clumsy and crooked across the page, a child's battle with language itself. When silence came back to her like a locked door, her face fell. "You're not going to answer me, are you?"
Her voice cracked. She returned to her chair, shoulders bent under a weight too heavy for her age. The tears pressed against her eyes, burning, yet for the first time she resisted them, clenching her fists against the tide.
"Why do you have to be so far away, Mama? Edwards protected me, and they almost killed him. I want to be with you now... Just give me some advice, anything..."
But Iris did not stir.
Sarah stood halfway, her legs trembling as though carrying stones. Her breath came in fragments. She steadied herself against the bed, clinging to memory like driftwood.
"Do you remember when you bought me that pink cotton candy I loved? A ball hit my hand, and it fell, rolled into a puddle... and it melted, disappeared, like it had never been. You told me it was still with me—that it had gone into my dreams—and you bought me another. But I haven't dreamed of it yet. Where is it, Mama? Where is it?"
The words splintered into sobs. Her small fists balled up against her eyes. "Please... dream it for me. Dream it, and send me just a word. Show me you want to give it to me again. Or just give it to me now..."
Her tears came hot and unrelenting, streaks of anger and sorrow carved into her cheeks. She shook with feelings too tangled for her young mind to name—rage at her father, despair at her mother's silence, fear at the shadows closing in around her.
"My father left you like this, Mama. And I don't ever want to see him again. He left me there with you—your body, the blood—I thought you were dead. Edwards held me back, wouldn't let me see you in the hospital. But now I did, I came here... and he was right. I'm not ready. I'm not... I'm not..."
Her voice broke completely. No more words—only the collapse of a child's soul against her mother's still body. Sarah threw herself onto Iris, pressing her face into her abdomen, her sobs muffled against the cloth. Her small hands struck in feeble anger, not to hurt, but because grief demanded motion. The folded paper crumpled under her shifting weight, crushed beneath the storm of her tears.
From the window, Martha watched in silence. The girl's fragility pressed against her heart, but her own exhaustion was heavier still. She closed her eyes for a moment, then turned away, choosing duty over despair. With the water bag in hand, she walked back into the corridors, her shadow swallowed by the sterile light, leaving Sarah alone with her broken words and her mother's unreachable dreams.
Martha entered the dim room of Mr. Ontario, the frail old man asleep beneath the sterile glow of the fluorescent light. His chest rose and fell, slow and shallow, like the ebb of a dying tide. She placed the fresh water bag by his bedside, carefully replacing the old one, her touch softer than her mood allowed.
"Rest well, Ontario..." she whispered, almost as though speaking to herself, and slipped out of the room with his documents tucked under her arm.
The corridors of the hospital stretched endlessly, cold and unforgiving. When she reached the waiting area, Martha stopped before the desk where an old telephone sat—Edwards's phone, its worn edges like relics of another life. Her hand hovered over it, her fingers trembling. For a long moment, she hesitated. Then, as though surrendering to instinct, she picked it up and carried it back toward Edwards's room, her clipboard forgotten on the chair behind her.
She entered quietly. Edwards stirred, his eyes half-open, his breathing uneven. Martha placed the phone on the small table near his bed, glancing around for Paula.
"Did the nurse I left with you come already?" she asked.
"Yes," Edwards replied hoarsely. "She said she needed to check my blood pressure."
"She went to fetch the machine, right?"
"So it seems."
Martha exhaled, her brows furrowing. Her voice softened when she spoke again:
"You should see Sarah in her mother's room."
"Sad?" Edwards asked.
"Just that?"
The silence stretched. Martha's sigh carried the weight of exhaustion and things she could not change. Edwards broke it with a voice raw but sincere:
"Do you think if she sees me now, even just for a few seconds, she might feel joy? Even a flicker? Because all I want is for her to stay innocent, just a little longer..."
Martha's gaze shifted to the floor. "That girl is bearing too much, Edwards. I can't tell you for certain... Just don't do anything foolish."
With that, she turned and walked away. Edwards remained in the quiet, lost in thought, until the phone on his table blinked and beeped to life. A name appeared across the dim screen: Paulie.
Edwards reached for it slowly, wincing with each stretch of his arm, but managed to wrap his hand around the device. Outside, Paula reappeared with the pressure machine, her steps quick and precise. Meanwhile, Martha was gathering her things, her shift nearly over, the new iron pills rattling in her pocket like the loose pieces of her will.
Sarah, through the window of Iris's room, saw everything. She saw Edwards pushing himself upright, limping through the hallway, his body heavy but his face adorned with a soft, almost impossible smile. The world slowed for her. It was as if time itself bent to allow her to drink in that sight: a man scarred, bent, yet smiling at her like she was still a child untouched by shadows. For the first time in days, admiration brushed against her sadness, painting her cheeks with something she could not yet name.
Then the spell broke. Paula's voice rang through the corridor like an alarm.
"He's gone! He's escaped!" she shouted, panic clinging to every syllable.
Her words bounced off the sterile walls, spreading fear like fire through dry grass. She ran down the corridor and nearly collided with Martha, who had just reached the exit. Martha froze, the words hitting her like a blow. Her heart knew the truth before her mind accepted it.
"Don't tell me..." she muttered, her eyes narrowing, "How could no one have seen him? Where were you?!"
Paula's voice cracked under hysteria. "This is bad, this is very, very bad..."
Martha gritted her teeth, forcing down the storm inside her. "Just stay with Sarah. Do you understand me? Stay with her. I'll fix this."
"Understood. I'll call Kimberly to help—"
"I'll do that. Go. Now!"
Paula darted back toward Iris's room while Martha slipped into the staff bathroom. The walls closed in on her like judgment itself. She stood before the mirror, staring at her reflection, her weary eyes, her hollowed cheeks, the lines carved by years of quiet battles. She braced her hands against the sink, the porcelain cold beneath her fingers, and swallowed her iron pills dry.
But there was no calm this time, no slow mending of resolve. What spread through her wasn't strength—it was fury, naked and burning.
"I'm a disgrace," she whispered, a bitter laugh escaping her throat. "A disgrace..."
The laugh grew until it broke into a scream.
"A DISGRACE! THAT'S WHAT I AM!"
Her fist surged forward before reason could stop it. The mirror exploded into shards, raining across the sink, slicing her skin as glass became teeth. Her head fell against the fractured surface, splitting the image of her face into four uneven pieces, four broken selves staring back at her with lifeless eyes.
Blood traced the cracks, red rivers running through the splintered reflection. Martha stood there trembling, her breath ragged, the metallic taste of failure sharp in her mouth.
In that shattered glass, she did not see herself, only the ruin of someone who had tried to hold the world together with bare hands, only to feel it collapse through her fingers.
TO BE CONTINUED...