Chapter 15 - The Secret Hospital Logs
"Vanessa?" I gasped, stopping dead on the bottom stair.
Jason lowered the rifle slightly, but his expression remained hard as flint. "What are you doing breaking into our home at two in the morning?"
Vanessa collapsed onto her knees right there on the wet tiles, weeping hysterically. The manicured, arrogant golden child who had sneered at my premature baby on Christmas night was gone. In her place was an emaciated, hollow-eyed wreck. Her designer jacket was torn at the seams, and her wrist bore dark, ugly purplish bruises.
"She took everything, Clara," Vanessa sobbed, clutching her stomach. "Mom took out three private loans in my name before the court froze her assets. She signed my signature on power-of-attorney documents while I was drunk at her apartment. The debt collectors came to my condo yesterday. They took my car. They put a lien on everything!"
"And you thought coming here to steal from us would fix it?" Jason challenged coldly.
"I didn't come to steal!" Vanessa gasped, reaching into her soaked duffel bag with trembling fingers. Jason instantly raised the rifle an inch, but Vanessa pulled out an accordion folder wrapped in heavy plastic. "I came to bring you this."
She shoved the folder across the slick kitchen floor toward my feet.
"What is that?" I asked, keeping my distance.
"It’s the original St. Jude’s file," Vanessa whispered, wiping her nose with the back of a bruised hand. "The one Albright kept in his personal safe at the clinic. Mom hired someone to break into Albright’s office last week to destroy the real logs after she filed that fraudulent affidavit. I overheard her talking to Arthur Pendelton on the phone. She promised to pay him twenty percent of the trust recovery if he pushed the paternity fraud angle."
I knelt slowly and picked up the damp folder. Inside were dozens of pages of handwritten physician logs, clinical lab printouts, and internal hospital memos stamped with red *CONFIDENTIAL* seals.
As I flipped through the pages, my eyes caught a memo dated three days before Emma was delivered:
*To: Evelyn Holloway*
*From: Dr. Kenneth Albright*
*Ref: Patient Clara Holloway - Induced Stress Delivery Protocol*
*Per your private financial commitment to the Albright Research Foundation, the prescribed low-dose synthetic pitocin injections will be administered under the guise of routine electrolyte therapy. The resulting uterine contractions should trigger early labor within 72 hours, guaranteeing delivery prior to the fiscal year-end trust vesting deadline established by Sarah Holloway's 2018 estate amendment.*
My vision blurred. The kitchen seemed to spin violently around me.
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Emma hadn't arrived early because my body was weak. She hadn't spent weeks suffocating in an incubator because of bad luck or genetics.
My own mother had medically induced my labor in secret, risking my daughter’s life and mine, solely to ensure the birth occurred before Grandma Sarah’s estate clock expired.
