Chapter 3 - The Coldest Room in New York
The black armored Maybach tore through the Manhattan grid like a missile, its siren wailing through the raging winter storm. Inside, two paramedics were already wrapping my frostbitten feet in heated thermal pads, while Evelyn sat beside me, clutching my left hand in both of hers. She had not let go once.
"Tell me everything, darling," Evelyn whispered, her voice shaking as she smoothed my wet hair back. "What is your name?"
"Maya," I said softly, my voice hoarse. "Mom called me Maya because she said I was a little miracle that came in May."
A fresh tear rolled down Evelyn’s cheek. "Maya. You have her eyes. Big and curious. God forgive me, you have her exact eyes. How long have you lived like this?"
"We had an apartment in Jersey until Mom lost her job at the bakery," I explained, staring down at the thick leather seats. "Then she got sick. Coughing all night with blood in the tissues. The landlord changed the locks three weeks ago. We slept in the shelter until a man tried to steal my boots, and then Mom said the rail yard abandoned storage shack was safer."
Across the cabin, Julian sat in silence, furiously tapping away on his encrypted phone, his jaw set in a hard, dangerous line. Every few seconds, he cast a venomous glance at me. Even at nine years old, I knew the look of a hungry dog that had just seen someone take its bone.
"We're here, Mrs. Whitmore," Edward called from the front passenger seat.
The Maybach skidded to a halt in a desolate industrial lot beneath the massive steel skeleton of the Queensboro Bridge. Snowdrifts had piled three feet high against abandoned shipping containers and rusted machinery. Wind howled through the rusted girders like a dying animal.
Two paramedic squads vaulted out of their transport vehicles behind us, armed with portable defibrillators, oxygen tanks, and thermal stretchers. Evelyn pushed open her door before Edward could even reach the handle.
"Lead the way, Maya!" she shouted over the screaming blizzard.
I stumbled out into the knee-deep snow, Evelyn holding my hand with a grip like steel. I led them past a row of burned-out chassis toward a collapsed wooden maintenance shack huddled against the concrete abutment.
"Mom!" I screamed, kicking open the rotted wooden door. "Mom, I brought her! I found her!"
The interior of the shack was pitch black and smelled of rot and damp concrete. In the far corner, tucked beneath a pile of wet cardboard boxes and a threadbare wool blanket, lay a motionless silhouette.
"Sarah!" Evelyn cried, dropping to the filthy floor, completely indifferent to the grime coating her silk.
She pulled the cardboard away.
Sarah Whitmore lay curled on her side. Her lips were blue, her cheeks hollowed out by starvation, her skin as pale as the snow falling outside. Her breathing was so shallow that for a terrible second, I thought my mother had slipped away while I was running through the streets.
"No pulse at the wrist," the lead paramedic announced urgently, placing his fingers against her throat. "Weak carotid pulse. Heart rate is down to twenty-eight. Severe hypothermia, advanced pneumonia. We need her in the pod right now! Push twenty of epinephrine, prepare warm IV saline!"
Evelyn threw her arms around Sarah’s frozen body, weeping openly against her daughter's chest. "I’m sorry, Sally. I’m so sorry. Mama is here. Please don’t go. Please don't leave me again."
For a fraction of a second, Sarah’s eyelids fluttered open. Her sunken brown eyes moved sluggishly until they locked onto Evelyn’s tear-stained face. Her cracked, bleeding lips parted, barely releasing a breath.
"Mother...?"
"Yes, my baby. It’s me. I'm here."
Sarah’s trembling hand weakly rose an inch from the frozen floor, reaching not for her mother, but toward me. "Maya... my baby... protect Maya..."
"She is safe, Sarah! I swear to you on my life, she is safe!" Evelyn cried.
May you like
Sarah’s eyes rolled back, and her hand fell limp. The heart monitor let out a shrill, warning shriek as the paramedics lifted her onto the heated transport gurney.
***
