I ran.
My boots slammed against the polished linoleum of the hospital hallway, slipping slightly on the melting snow that had dripped from the gurneys of other arrivals. The air in the corridor smelled of floor wax and fear. It was a smell I knew well, a scent that coated the back of your throat and refused to leave.
I burst through the double doors of Trauma Room One.
The scene before me was a choreographed riot. A violent ballet of desperate science.
Leo was barely visible beneath the swarm of medical personnel. A nurse was straddling the boy’s small, frail chest, performing compressions. She was using just two thumbs, but the force rocked his tiny body with every thrust.
One, and two, and three, and four…
“Hold compressions!” Dr. Evans shouted, her eyes fixed on the cardiac monitor.
The room fell into a terrifying, vacuum-sealed silence. The only sound was the high-pitched whine of the defibrillator charging—a sound that always reminded me of a bomb counting down.
We all looked at the screen.
A flat green line.
“Asystole,” Evans cursed. “He’s not shockable. Resume compressions! Push one of Epi! Flush it! Get that core temp up, damn it! We cannot call it until he’s warm!”
The nurse resumed the rhythm. Thump. Thump. Thump.
I stood in the doorway, paralyzed. My police jacket—the one I had wrapped him in—was crumpled in the corner of the room, a dark puddle of melting snow forming around it. It looked like a discarded shell.
At the foot of the bed, the golden retriever puppy, Barnaby, had been moved to a chair. He wasn’t sleeping anymore. He was standing on his hind legs, his front paws resting on the arm of the chair, staring at the boy. He let out a low, guttural whimper that sounded painfully human.
I walked over to the dog. I didn’t know why. Maybe because everyone else was working on the boy, and I needed to do something. I placed my hand on the puppy’s head. He was trembling, vibrating with a frequency that matched the tension in the room.
“Come on, Leo,” I whispered, the words catching in my throat like jagged glass. “Don’t you do this. You didn’t survive the ice just to die in the warmth.”
“Time since last pulse check?” Evans barked.
“Two minutes!”
“Hold!”
Silence again.
We waited. The line on the monitor wavered. It jumped. A jagged spike. Then another. Then a chaotic, erratic squiggly line.
“V-Fib!” Evans yelled. “Now we can shock! Charge to 50 joules! Clear!”
Everyone stepped back. The nurse hopped off the bed.
“Clear!”
Thump.
Leo’s small body arched off the mattress, a violent spasm that looked too harsh for such a fragile frame.
“Check rhythm.”
The monitor settled.
Beep… … … Beep… … … Beep.
It was slow. It was weak. But it was there. Sinus bradycardia. A rhythm. Life.
“We have a pulse!” the nurse shouted, the relief in her voice cracking the professional veneer. “Pressure is 60 over 40. It’s rising.”
Dr. Evans slumped shoulders-first against the crash cart, exhaling a breath she seemed to have been holding for ten minutes. She looked at me across the room. Her forehead was slick with sweat, despite the air conditioning.
“He’s back,” she said softly. “But Jack… his brain. He was down a long time. The oxygen deprivation…”
She didn’t have to finish the sentence. I knew. I had seen it before. The lights might be on, but the house could be empty.
“Stabilize him,” I said, my voice sounding distant to my own ears. “Just keep him here.”
I watched as they worked to secure lines, adjust the ventilator, and wrap him in the Bair Hugger warming blanket. He looked less like a boy and more like a medical experiment, tubes and wires snakeskinning out of every part of him.
I walked over to the bedside. I looked at his face. The blue tinge was fading, replaced by a ghostly pallor. His eyes were taped shut to protect the corneas.
I reached out and touched his hand. It was still cold, but not the stone-cold of the park.
“I’m going to find her, Leo,” I promised him. “I’m going to find out why.”
I felt a wet nose nudge my other hand. Barnaby. The puppy had jumped down from the chair and was pressing his head against my leg. I looked down. The dog’s eyes were soulful, ancient. He looked at me, then at the door.
He knew. Animals always know.
I turned to Dr. Evans. “Keep the dog with him. Please.”
“It’s against every regulation in the book,” she sighed, checking the boy’s pupils with a penlight. “But I’m the attending. I’ll say it’s a therapy animal. Just… get out of here, Jack. Go find the parents. We can’t treat him properly if we don’t know his medical history.”
I nodded. I grabbed my personal cell phone and took a photo of Leo’s face—peaceful, despite the tubes. Then I took a picture of the note.
I walked out of the trauma room, leaving the noise of the machines behind. The hallway was quiet again.
I sat on a bench near the nurses’ station and tried to compose myself. I was shaking. Delayed reaction. The adrenaline dump. I needed to switch gears. I needed to stop being ‘Jack the Human’ and start being ‘Officer Miller.’
I pulled the evidence bag out of my pocket. The button. The white plastic button with white thread.
I looked at the blanket again—not the one on the boy, but the one I had brought in with him. It was balled up in a plastic patient belongings bag on the counter.
I walked over and opened the bag. The smell of wet wool and old, stale perfume wafted out. It wasn’t a clean smell. It smelled like a closet that hadn’t been opened in years.
I spread the blanket out on the counter. It was a cheap, scratchy wool blend. A tartan pattern, faded red and green.
I examined the corners. No tag. I flipped it over.
There, sewn into the hem, was a white fabric label. The ink was faded, washed out a hundred times, but I could still read the block letters:
PROPERTY OF S.P.S.L. – ROOM 204
S.P.S.L.
Shady Pines Senior Living.
The pieces slammed together in my mind like a magnet snapping into place.
The white button. A nurse’s aide uniform or a cleaner’s tunic. The location. Shady Pines was on 63rd Street, four blocks from the park. The bus route. The 63rd Street bus stop. The poverty. Minimum wage staff, overworked, underpaid.
I looked at the clock. 4:45 AM.
The night shift would be ending soon. Shift change was usually 6:00 AM or 7:00 AM. If she worked there, she might still be on the clock. Or she had just left.
I grabbed my radio. “Dispatch, 4-Alpha. Show me clear of St. Mary’s. I’m en route to 63rd and Cottage Grove. Shady Pines Nursing Home.”
“Copy 4-Alpha. You want backup?”
“Not yet,” I said. “I want to see what I’m walking into first.”
I walked out into the cold night. The snow had stopped falling, leaving the city covered in a pristine, deceptive white sheet. It looked innocent. But I knew what was buried underneath.
Chapter 6: The Breadcrumbs in the Snow
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