I cut open a three-month-old baby’s sock with a pair of scissors while her mother watched. Security tackled me before anyone realized I had just saved her foot.

"Dr. Vance," Dr. Vale said stepping forward, shielding me behind her. "This illegal operation ends tonight. Put the folder down."

Vance chuckled, a cold, soundless laugh. "Helena, you were always too idealistic for medicine. Do you have any idea how much funding this hospital receives from the families we assist? We save these children from lives of poverty and neglect and place them into homes of immense wealth and opportunity."

"You steal them!" I screamed, stepping out from behind Dr. Vale. "You stole my baby girl! You lied to me, you drugged me, and you told me she was dead!"

Delia Voss looked away, unable to meet my eyes, her hands shaking slightly against her scrubs.

"You were a nineteen-year-old single mother working minimum wage, Maren," Vance said without a trace of remorse. "Your daughter, Lena, lives a life of unprecedented luxury in Connecticut. She attends elite private schools, plays the violin, and wants for nothing. You could never have given her that."

Hearing that my daughter was alive, healthy, and playing the violin tore through my heart like a double-edged sword. She was alive. My baby was alive.

"She wasn't yours to give away!" I shouted.

"Enough," Vance ordered the security guards. "Restrain Dr. Vale and escort Ms. Cole off the premises. Throw her in the back of a van and make sure she never speaks again. Prepare Baby Ward for immediate transport."

As the two guards moved toward us, I acted on instinct. I grabbed a heavy fire extinguisher from the wall bracket beside me and pulled the pin, spraying a blinding wall of white chemical powder directly into the guards' faces.

They coughed and stumbled backward, blinded. Dr. Vale reacted instantly, shoving Vance into a row of metal shelves. The heavy shelves collapsed like dominoes, dropping hundreds of medical files on top of him.