Page 45 of Empower

I felt all the air in my lungs, seize.

Did... did... did I just hear what I think I heard?

I opened my mouth to shriek out my thoughts, but before I could come up with a response, I caught sight of Raine walking up.

She handed me my coffee and winked at Storm, uh huh.

I opened my mouth again to question what he meant, but the man beat me to it, “I’ll be here to pick you up from your shift and bring you home, your truck will be back in your driveway.”

And again, before I could say a word, he started his bike back up and then looked at me and jerked his chin to the door.

Again, I opened my mouth, but Raine tagged my hand and started pulling me into the hospital.

If she hadn’t told me she was pregnant a few days ago, I would have slapped her.

Because the words I thought I heard come from Strom’s mouth definitely warranted being written up for being late.

Name one woman who would disagree with me, and I’ll drop to my knees and kiss her feet.

With his words rattling around in my brain, we both headed inside and started our day.

***

Halfway through my shift came one of the codes that no one wanted to hear, “Code Pink.”

Code Pink meant that a baby was missing from the birthing center.

Automatically the floor was locked down.

That meant the elevators would bypass the fourth floor and the doors wouldn’t open so you could leave the floor.

Also, for every single emergency exit that led to stairs, the doors locked automatically.

Kelsey and Ginger remained in the NICU once we verified that all the babies were present and accounted for and locked the door.

With that done, we began the search.

The birthing center took up the entire fourth floor of the hospital. Anything you can imagine you would require while giving birth and the post-partum process, we have you covered.

Unfortunately, with that many rooms and that many places where a baby could be hidden, it meant that we had a lot of work to do.

At once we began checking and rechecking all the hospital bracelets.

It took two hours, and twelve nurses and two doctors to search every single nook and cranny.

Everyone was looking around as Hannah, the charge nurse, came out of her office and said, “A woman ran up to me and said her baby was missing. I’ve never seen her before. Now that I think about it, she didn’t look like she just had a baby.”

Security and the police had been called to look at the security tapes, but nothing was determined as of yet. We all went back to work with our eyes peeled.

As soon as the next shift of nurses showed up, we handed off our notes and charts.

“That was a long shift, my feet are killing me. I’m going to have Tank give me a massage.” Raine said while wiggling her eyebrows.

I laughed at her knowing what she really meant, “TMI, girl.”

Sometimes my best friend from another mother was way too damn much.

Then here came Storm and Tank. Raine and I both busted out laughing.