Expressionless, I backed the file up to three encrypted servers. Then I called a private medical-transport team owned by a man whose life I’d saved two years earlier.

Protocol said I shouldn’t move. But breathing the same recycled air as Preston Pierce made me ill.

By 3 a.m., four security guards and two private nurses arrived with a stretcher. Gritting through the pain, I signed out against medical advice. The charge nurse, weeping, broke protocol to process the infant’s discharge.

I cradled the sleeping boy—whom I named Winter, for the cold I’d crossed to bring him here—against my chest.

Before they wheeled me out, I laid the couriered divorce papers and a formal malpractice lawsuit squarely on the nightstand. On top of the stack, I placed the recorder, its red light pulsing like a heartbeat.

Rule one of trauma medicine: when facing necrotic tissue, amputate decisively, and never look back.