Chapter 19: Rebirth in Stolen Moments
The only certainty in the private room was the low pulse of Dominic’s monitor. Letty’s single word, Now, had snapped the fragile peace like a twig. Their return from the NICU was a silent, hurried procession, the wonder of seeing the twins replaced by a cold, prickling awareness.
Back in the twin beds, Dominic pushed himself upright, the pain in his abdomen a hot, blunt reminder of his vulnerability. “Who was it?” His voice was gravel.
Letty leaned against the closed door, her phone a dark slab in her hand. “Elsa. The clinic nurse.” She kept her voice low, though the hum of the hallway was their only audience. “Swiss police have a bulletin. Descriptions of a man and a woman, seriously injured, possibly with a child and newborns. They’re checking hospitals.”
“They don’t have names?” Catalina asked from her bed. She’d pulled her knees to her chest, a defensive gesture that made her look young.
“Not yet. But the descriptions are good. The gunshot, the blood loss. It’s only a matter of time before they knock on this door.” Letty’s eyes cut to the window, the serene, deceptive view of the pines. “Tej’s at the garage. The Volvo’s ready. It’s a ’92 245, blue. He’s modifying it now.”
“We can’t move the babies,” Dominic said, but it wasn’t a refusal. It was a problem to be solved.
“We don’t have a choice.” Letty pushed off the door. “Elsa says there’s a pediatric transport team here. For high-risk transfers. If we can get them discharged into that…”
“We steal an ambulance?” Catalina’s eyebrows went up.
“We borrow a specialized medical transport vehicle,” Letty corrected, a ghost of her old smirk touching her lips. “Tej is working on the paperwork. He’s… persuasive.”
Dominic swung his legs over the side of the bed, a slow, deliberate act of will. The stitches pulled. He ignored it. “We go tonight. After the last shift change. Catalina, can you walk?”
She nodded, though her face was pale. “I can walk.” She looked at him, and in that glance was the shared, unspoken language of a lifetime. The plan was forming, a dangerous, necessary shape. The horror of the mountain was being replaced by the meticulous mechanics of escape.
The afternoon bled away, each minute a slow drip of tension. Nurses came and went, checking vitals, changing bags. They played their parts: the devoted, relieved young couple, the "Torettis," grateful for the care. Dominic squeezed Catalina’s hand when a nurse was present, a performance of conjugal comfort. The moment the door clicked shut, the performance dissolved into grim silence, broken only by the scratch of Letty’s pen as she sketched routes on a stolen hospital notepad.
Mina, sensing the atmosphere, was clingy and quiet. She sat on Dominic’s bed, her small body tucked against his uninjured side, flipping through a picture book without seeming to see the pages. Every time a cart rattled past in the hall, her head would snap up, her eyes wide.
“It’s okay, mija,” Dominic murmured, his hand on her hair. “Just noise.”
“When do we go home?” she whispered, not looking up from a picture of a bright red car.
“Soon,” he said. The word felt hollow.
Dusk settled, painting the Alpine view in blues and purples. The hospital quieted, the day staff replaced by a skeletal night crew. At exactly 9 PM, there was a soft, rhythmic knock on the door: two taps, a pause, three more.
Letty opened it. Tej slipped inside, bringing the scent of cold air, motor oil, and urgency. He nodded at them, his face sharp in the low light. “It’s done. The wagon’s in the staff lot, third row. Keys are in the visor. The transport van is parked in the ambulance bay, service bay three. Rear doors are unlocked. The pediatric unit thinks it’s being prepped for a transfer to Bern at 0600.” He held up a lanyard with a keycard and a photo ID of a grim-faced man who bore only a passing resemblance to him. “I’m Klaus. From logistics.”
Catalina let out a short, humorless laugh. “Klaus.”
“Hey, it works.” Tej handed Letty a bulky janitor’s jacket and a similar card. “You’re Greta. You’re with me. We’re doing a final systems check on the transport before the morning crew arrives.”
Letty shrugged into the jacket, zipping it to her chin.
“What about them?” Tej asked, jerking his head toward Dominic and Catalina.
“We’re leaving,” Dominic said. He stood, a slow uncoiling that ended with him upright, his jaw tight against the pain. He reached for the clothes Letty had scavenged earlier—soft sweatpants, a hoodie. Dressing was an exercise in controlled agony, each movement precise and shallow.
Catalina mirrored him, moving with the careful stiffness of someone whose body had been recently torn apart. She pulled on leggings and a thick sweater, her face pale but set.
“The babies,” she said, her voice barely audible.
“That’s phase two,” Tej said, checking his watch. “You two get to the Volvo.Get it warm. Letty and I will go to the NICU. We’ll bring them down in the transport. We meet at the secondary extraction point—the forestry service road, two clicks east of here. The one we scoped yesterday.”
“You can’t just walk out of the NICU with two newborns,” Catalina said, a thread of panic in her voice.
Letty met her gaze. “We’re not walking. We’re transporting, with a signed release form and a very convincing Klaus.” She held up a clipboard. “It’s not pretty, but it’ll get us past one tired nurse at a desk. Once we’re in the van, we’re gone.”
The plan was insane. It was thin ice over a bottomless drop. Dominic looked at Catalina, at Mina clinging to her leg, at the desperate, determined faces of his friends. It was all they had.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s move.”
The hallway was a tunnel of dimmed lights and distant, echoing voices. They moved as a unit, a slow, injured convoy. Mina walked between Dominic and Catalina, holding each of their hands. Letty and Tej walked ahead, a few paces apart, playing their roles.
Every footfall was too loud. Every opening door made Dominic’s heart slam against his ribs. They took the service stairs, avoiding the elevators and their cameras. The concrete well swallowed the sound of their descent, Dominic’s breath coming in short, pained huffs.
The door to the staff parking lot hissed open, unleashing a blast of freezing night air. The cold was a shock, biting through the thin sweatshirt. The lot was half-full, pools of light under orange lamps casting long shadows.
“Third row,” Tej whispered, pointing. “Blue. Go.”
Letty pressed the key fob into Catalina’s hand. “We’ll see you in twenty minutes. Don’t wait if we’re longer than thirty.Drive. We’ll find you.”
Catalina’s fingers closed around the fob. Her eyes locked with Letty’s, a torrent of unspoken fear and trust passing between them. Then Letty and Tej melted back into the hospital, the doors swallowing them.
Dominic, Catalina, and Mina were alone in the vast, cold lot. The Volvo was there, a boxy, dark silhouette. It started with a solid, reassuring rumble. Dominic slid into the driver’s seat, the act of buckling in sending a fresh wave of fire through his middle. Catalina got in the passenger side, lifting Mina into the back where a child’s seat, another of Tej’s acquisitions, was already belted in.
He let the engine idle, the heater blowing cold air that slowly began to warm. The silence in the car was absolute, pressurized. Mina fell asleep almost instantly, exhausted by fear and the late hour.
They watched the ambulance bay. The service door was a rectangle of bright light in the dark wall of the hospital. Minutes stretched, elastic and cruel. Dominic’s hand found Catalina’s on the center console. Her skin was ice-cold. He laced his fingers through hers, squeezing.
“They’ll make it,” he said, to her or to himself, he wasn’t sure.
At eighteen minutes, the service door opened. Two figures in light-colored jackets emerged, pushing a tall, narrow incubator on wheels. A second person carried another infant carrier. They moved with professional calm towards the parked transport van.
Dominic’s breath caught. It was them. It was working.
He saw Letty glance towards the parking lot, a fleeting check. Then they loaded the incubator and the carrier into the back of the van. The doors shut with a solid thump. The van’s engine turned over, its headlights flaring to life.
Dominic put the Volvo in gear, ready to pull out and follow at a discreet distance.
The van didn’t move.
Ten seconds.Twenty.
“Why aren’t they moving?” Catalina whispered, her nails digging into his hand.
Then, the ambulance bay’s main doors flew open. A man in a security guard’s uniform stepped out, holding up a hand. He was speaking into a radio. He walked quickly towards the idling transport van.
“Mierda,” Dominic breathed.
He saw the van’s driver’s door open. Tej got out, playing the part of “Klaus,” already gesticulating, pointing at his clipboard. The guard shook his head, his other hand going to the baton on his belt. He pointed back towards the hospital.
A argument. A failed bluff.
Dominic’s mind raced, options evaporating. He was in no shape for a fight. Catalina was weaker. They had Mina.
He saw Letty slip out of the passenger side, her body language shifting from bureaucratic to something else, something low and ready. This was about to go very bad, very fast.
Then, a new sound cut the night—the rising wail of a siren, still distant but approaching fast. Flashing blue lights washed across the hospital facade from the main road.
The guard heard it too. He turned, distracted.Tej moved. It wasn’t a punch; it was a quick, efficient shove, sending the guard stumbling back against the wall of the bay. Letty was already back in the van. Tej leapt into the driver’s seat. The van’s tires screeched as it lunged forward, not towards the exit, but into the staff parking lot.
It barreled towards them.
Dominic slammed his foot on the gas. The Volvo’s rear wheels slipped on the frost before grabbing asphalt. He swung the car out of its space, aiming for the lot’s rear exit—a narrow access road Tej had identified.
In the rearview mirror, he saw the transport van swerve to follow, its high roof rocking. The security guard was scrambling to his feet, radio to his mouth. The police sirens were closer now, the blue lights painting the trees in strobing bursts.
“They’re right behind us,” Catalina said, twisting in her seat to look back.
“Hold on,” Dominic growled, and took the access road at a speed that made the old wagon’s frame groan. The road was rough, unpaved, winding through the dark woods. Branches lashed the sides of the car. In the back, Mina woke with a cry.
“It’s okay, baby, it’s okay,” Catalina called back, her voice straining with false calm.
He drove by instinct, by the map Tej had burned into his brain. His body was one solid ache, the wound in his side screaming with every bump and jolt. He could see the van’s headlights in his mirror, bouncing wildly but holding on.
The forestry service road appeared on the left, a darker gap in the wall of trees. Dominic spun the wheel, the Volvo sliding sideways before fishtailing onto the gravel track. He killed the headlights, plunging them into near-total darkness, driving by the faint glow of a shrouded moon on the gravel.
A hundred yards in, he stopped, the van pulling in tight behind him.
The silence that followed was broken by the fading sirens on the main road, and the frantic, thin cries of two newborns.
Dominic rested his forehead against the steering wheel, his body trembling with pain and adrenaline. They were out. For now.
The van’s side door slid open. Letty jumped down, her face a mask of fierce triumph in the gloom. “We’re clear,” she said, her voice tight. “But we need to move. That guard got our plate.”
Tej emerged from the driver’s side, hauling out the portable incubator. Inside, tiny Leo was squirming, his face screwed up in outrage. Letty carefully lifted the infant carrier holding Stella.
Catalina was out of the Volvo in an instant, stumbling on the uneven ground in her rush. She went to Letty, peering into the carrier at her daughter’s face. A sob broke from her chest, a sound of pure relief. She took the carrier, holding it close.
Dominic walked to Tej, looked down at his son in the clear plastic box. The medical equipment beeped softly, a green light pulsing. He placed a hand on the cool plastic, a vow in the touch.
“Let’s go home,” he said.
They transferred the fragile cargo to the Volvo’s spacious back, securing the incubator and carrier with straps and blankets. Letty and Mina climbed into the back seat beside them. Tej took the wheel of the Volvo. Dominic, his energy spent, slumped in the passenger seat, his head against the cold window.
The big, blue wagon moved off the forestry road, onto a secondary highway heading south, into the deeper, welcoming darkness of the Alps. Behind them, the hospital lights vanished behind a fold of mountains.
In the back, the babies’ cries settled into soft, hiccupping sighs. Letty hummed a tuneless song. Mina fell back asleep, her head in Letty’s lap.
Catalina reached forward, her hand coming to rest on Dominic’s shoulder. He covered it with his own, his fingers trembling slightly. No words. They had all they could carry: the pain, the fear, and these two new, breathing hearts, theirs to protect in the wild, uncertain night ahead. The road was all they had now, and for once, it was enough.
The road was all they had now, and for once, it was enough.
Tej drove the big Volvo with a steady, deliberate patience that felt at odds with the frantic sprint from the hospital. The engine’s low hum and the tires on the asphalt became a rhythm, a lullaby for the exhausted and the wounded. In the back, the babies finally quieted, their tiny forms lost in the professional padding of the stolen incubator and carrier.
Dominic watched the black pines bleed into the grey rock faces of the mountains, his hand pressed tight against the bandages beneath his hoodie. Every bump sent a spike of fire through his middle, a persistent, nagging reminder of how close everything had come to ending. He glanced into the rearview mirror, catching fragmented glimpses of Catalina’s profile as she stared out her own window. Her reflection was pale, haunted by the same ghost.
“Feeding time,” Letty announced softly from the back seat, her voice cutting through the thick silence. She’d prepared bottles from the hospital’s supplies, her movements efficient in the dim light from the dashboard. Mina, awake now, watched with wide, serious eyes as Letty carefully fed first Stella, then Leo. The simple, domestic act in the chaos of their flight felt sacred, and absurd.
“They’re hungry,” Catalina murmured, a faint smile touching her lips for the first time in days. She turned to watch, her body angled stiffly against the seat. “Good sign.”
“They’re Torrettos,” Dominic said, the words rough. “Survival instincts.”
Tej snorted from the driver’s seat. “Let’s hope they inherited your sense of direction and not your lead foot. This crate handles like a brick on rollers.” He patted the dashboard with a sort of grudging affection. “A very reliable brick.”
The tension in the car eased, just a fraction. It was the old pattern, the crew finding a sliver of normalcy in the insanity. They drove for another hour, descending from the high Alpine passes into lower, forested valleys. The roads grew narrower, less maintained. Finally, Tej turned onto a gravel track that seemed to disappear into the woods.
“Home sweet home,” he said, not sounding sweet at all.
The safe house was a weathered, two-story chalet set back against a steep hillside, its wooden siding darkened by years of weather. It looked abandoned, which was the point. Tej killed the lights and coasted the last hundred yards to a stop beside a dilapidated shed.
“Power’s on,” Tej said, scanning the dark structure. “Generator’s in the basement. Place is stocked. No one’s used it since the Basel job.”
Getting inside was a slow, painful procession. Dominic moved like an old man, each step measured. Catalina leaned heavily on Letty, one arm wrapped protectively across her tender middle. Tej carried the incubator and Leo, Letty followed with Stella and a drowsy Mina. The key was under a rain-warped flowerpot. The door swung open on stiff hinges, releasing a wave of cold, stale air.
Inside, it was sparse and clean in a utilitarian way. A main room held a worn couch, a table, and a wood stove. A kitchenette lined one wall. A steep staircase led to a sleeping loft. It was a hideout, not a home. But it had four walls and a roof that hid them from the sky.
For the next two hours, they worked. Letty got a fire going in the stove, the crackling wood immediately pushing back the chill. Tej checked the perimeter, then the generator, ensuring their electricity—and more importantly, the incubator’s power—was secure. Dominic lowered himself onto the couch with a stifled groan, his face grey with strain. Catalina sank down beside him, her head dropping onto his shoulder almost of its own accord.
Letty brought them water and painkillers scavenged from the hospital. “Eat these,” she ordered, no room for argument. She’d also found tinned soup and was heating it on a camp stove. The mundane tasks were a lifeline, a way to stitch the frayed edges of the world back together.
Mina, wrapped in a blanket, sat on the rug before the fire, finally asleep. The twins were settled in a makeshift nursery Letty arranged on the floor near the warmth, their monitors emitting soft, reassuring glows in the dim room. For a suspended moment, there was only the sound of the fire, the gentle beeping, and the wind outside.
It felt, improbably, like peace.
The knock, when it came, was not gentle. It was a hard, rapid pounding on the heavy wooden door that shook the frame.
Everyone froze.
Dominic’s hand closed around Catalina’s wrist. Letty, who had been stirring the soup, went perfectly still, her eyes locking with Tej’s across the room. Tej’s hand drifted to the small of his back, where a gun was tucked.
The pounding came again, more insistent. “Letty! Open up! It’s Jesse!”
Another voice, higher, strained. “Please! We know you’re in there!”
Letty’s posture shifted from alarm to stunned recognition. She looked at Dominic, her eyes wide. “It’s… it’s the crew.”
“They think we’re dead,” Catalina whispered, the words tasting of ash.
The pounding became a furious drumbeat. “Letty, if you’re in there, open this goddamn door right now!”
Letty moved. She crossed the room in quick, silent strides and yanked the door open.
The chaos poured in. Jesse tumbled in first, his face tear-streaked and wild. He was followed by Leon, his usual calm shattered into sharp panic. Mia brought up the rear, her eyes red-raw from crying, a duffel bag clutched in her white-knuckled hand.
They all skidded to a halt just inside the doorway, their frantic energy colliding with the silent, still scene before them: the crackling fire, the sleeping child, the two infants in their medical pods, and Dominic and Catalina, alive but shattered, watching them from the couch.
Jesse’s mouth worked soundlessly. Leon simply stared, as if seeing ghosts. Mia’s bag dropped from her hands, hitting the floor with a soft thud.
Then her gaze found Dominic, then Catalina. A choked, broken sound escaped her throat. “You’re alive.” She said it like she was accusing them of a terrible trick. “The news… the radio said there was a shooting, a hospital… they said two patients, critical, matching your descriptions, had disappeared with newborns. We thought…” She couldn’t finish.
She took a stumbling step forward, her eyes darting between Dominic’s bandaged form, Catalina’s pallor, and the two tiny lives on the floor. Her confusion was a tangible force in the room. “What is this? What happened?” Her voice cracked. “Whose babies are these?”
The room held its breath. Dominic felt Catalina tense beside him. Letty stood by the open door, the cold night air swirling in. Tej’s hand was still near his weapon, his body a line of coiled readiness.
Jesse finally found his voice, his words tumbling out in a horrified rush. “We drove all night, man. We thought we were coming to get your bodies. We thought…” He looked at the babies, then back at Dominic and Catalina, his young face crumpling in a fresh wave of confusion and dawning, impossible understanding. “Oh my god.”
In the firelight, with the crew’s stunned faces painted in flickering orange and shadow, the fragile, secret world they had built in this room suddenly faced the outer one. The truth, vast and terrifying, now had an audience.