The woman we lifted from the county hospital had contusions, yes.
Severe blunt-force tissue trauma to the thoracic wall.
Four cracked ribs.
But her skull was never struck.
Her spleen is intact.
And her uterus is empty.”
The elevator doors parted.
A wide, sterile corridor stretched fifty yards ahead under pale fluorescent panels.There were no nurses with rolling carts, no orderlies, no visitors bearing plastic-wrapped carnations.
Only two armed sentries in plain dark fatigues standing outside Room 904 with short-barreled carbines slung across their chests.
My boots hit the polished composite floor.Each step felt hollow, like walking across the dry timbers of an old bridge suspended over a canyon.
“What do you mean, empty?”I asked.
“She wasn’t pregnant, Samantha,” Vance said, walking beside me, his gaze locked straight ahead.“Not five months.
Not five weeks.
Her serum beta-hCG was zero point zero two.
She has never carried a child.”
