Chapter 2 - The Room at the Top of the Stairs
The address led us to a narrow, three-story brick tenement building squeezed between a boarded-up laundromat and an auto-parts yard. The streetlamps were dark, killed by the storm, and the only light came from the flickering red sign of a distant gas station.
Snow drifted heavily against the rusted fire escapes.
Donald pulled the sedan to the curb, hazard lights blinking against the white walls of the alley. Before the car had even come to a complete stop, I threw my door open and stepped out into the knee-deep snow.
"Stay in the car with the girls, Rosa!" I called back.
"Robert, wait for the doctor!" she yelled over the howling wind.
"I can't wait!"
I sprinted toward the worn wooden front door of the building. It was unlocked, hanging slightly off its hinges. The hallway inside smelled of damp plaster, cheap heating oil, and old cabbage. A single bare bulb hung from a frayed wire on the ceiling, casting long, erratic shadows up the narrow staircase.
"Emily!" I shouted, my voice echoing up the stairwell. "Emily!"
Silence, save for the rhythmic rattling of the loose windowpanes in the storm.
I took the stairs two at a time, my heavy boots thudding against the rotting wooden steps. My heart pounded furiously against my ribs, a terrifying mix of physical exertion and sheer panic.
Third floor. Apartment 3B. The brass numbers were hanging upside down on the peeling green door.
I knocked hard. "Emily! It’s Dad! I'm here!"
No answer.
I grabbed the brass doorknob. It was unlocked. The latch clicked, and the door swung slowly inward with a low, mournful creak.
The apartment was freezing. The radiator in the corner was dead, clicking faintly as cold air whistled through a crack in the windowpane. There was almost no furniture—just a folding card table with two plastic chairs, a few cardboard boxes stacked neatly against the wall, and a small, unlit artificial Christmas tree sitting on the floor, decorated with tiny shapes cut out of colored paper.
In the corner of the room sat a narrow mattress on the floor, covered in every blanket the apartment possessed.
And beneath those blankets lay a motionless figure.
"Emily!"
I dropped to my knees beside the mattress, my hands shaking so violently I could barely pull the blankets back.
My daughter lay there, pale as the snow outside. Her dark hair, once so vibrant and wild, was thin and damp with cold sweat. Her cheeks were sunken, dark purple shadows bruised beneath her closed eyes. She was shivering uncontrollably, her chest rising and falling in shallow, ragged gasps that rattled deep in her lungs.
"Emily... oh god, Emily..."
I reached out and gathered her into my arms, pulling her up against my chest. She felt impossibly light, as if her body had been drained of all weight. Her skin was burning hot against my face—a terrible, raging fever trapped in a room cold enough to freeze water.
"Dad?" her voice was a papery whisper, so faint I had to press my ear to her lips to hear it.
"I'm here, baby. I'm right here," I sobbed, pressing my forehead against her burning brow, tears finally breaking free and streaming down my face. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
Her eyelids fluttered open, glassy and unfocused. She looked at me through the haze of her delirium, a tiny, heartbroken smile touching the corners of her cracked lips.
"You brought... the taxi?" she breathed.
"Grace is safe," I promised, rocking her back and forth. "She's downstairs. She's warm. She's with Sophie and Rosa. You did it, Emily. She's safe."
"I held out... as long as I could," she whispered, her breathing catching on a painful rasp. "David's gone, Dad. I couldn't... I couldn't fix the radiator... I couldn't buy the medicine..."
"Don't talk. Don't waste your strength. I'm taking you home."
May you like
"I didn't... want your money..." she whimpered, a single tear cutting a clear path through the fever-flush on her cheek. "I just wanted... my dad."
Those words tore through me like a blade, stripping away every remaining fragment of the arrogant, wealthy man I had been. I didn't answer with words. I simply lifted my thirty-two-year-old daughter into my arms, wrapping my heavy winter coat around her frail frame, and carried her out of that freezing room, down the rotting stairs, and into the night.
