Chapter 5 - Shadows in the Ward
The private room on the fourth floor of Flagstaff Medical Center was hushed, save for the rhythmic, steady beep of the cardiac monitor.
Leo lay in the center of the oversized hospital bed, swallowed whole by the white sheets. An IV drip was taped to the back of his bruised hand, steadily pushing fluids, electrolytes, and liquid vitamins into his depleted system. He weighed barely forty-two pounds—nearly fifteen pounds lighter than the day he had disappeared. His muscles were severely atrophied from lack of movement, his joints stiff, and his eyes remained intensely sensitive to the soft fluorescent lights.
David sat on the edge of the mattress, his large, rough hand encasing Leo’s fragile one. Maya was curled asleep at the foot of the bed, her small shoes kicked off, refusing to leave her brother’s side even when the nurses brought her dinner.
The door swung open, and Sarah stood in the threshold.
She looked as though she had run through a war zone. Her hair was windblown, her trench coat wrinkled, her face completely pale. She had boarded the first flight out of Austin, driven eighty miles an hour up the mountain pass from Phoenix, and hadn't drawn a full breath in six hours.
Her knees buckled the moment her eyes found the boy in the bed.
“Leo…” she whispered, a sound of profound, shattering agony.
Leo’s head turned slowly on the pillow. He blinked against the dim light, studying the trembling woman approaching him. For fourteen months, his captor had whispered into the dark that his mother had forgotten him, that she had given up, that she had chosen Maya and moved away.
Sarah fell to her knees beside the bed, burying her face into the blankets near his hip, weeping so violently her entire body convulsed. “My baby… my sweet, sweet boy… oh God, forgive me, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry…”
Leo’s small, bruised hand slowly lifted from the mattress. With excruciating effort, his fingers reached out and gently rested against the crown of his mother’s head.
“You still have your smell, Mama,” the boy whispered, tears finally pooling in his hollow eyes. “Apples and flowers. She told me you washed me out of your brain.”
“Never,” Sarah choked out, lifting her face to cover his pale cheeks, his forehead, and his trembling hands in desperate, burning kisses. “Every second of every day, Leo. You never left my heart. Not for one second.”
David wrapped his arms around both of them, his broad chest heaving as the family finally knit itself back together.
Yet, even in the warmth of that reunion, the shadows of the horror lingered. Whenever a nurse opened the door with a sharp click, Leo’s entire body went rigid. His breath would catch in his throat, his eyes darting frantically to the floor, expecting the dark wooden ceiling to close over his head once more.
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The boy was free from the cellar. But the cellar was still trapped inside the boy.
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