“Do not put your hands on this child.”

Dr. Evans stepped in, placating, reasonable. “Mr. Ransom, please. Let us take her. We do this all the time. She’ll be fine.”

And Evans reached down, slid his gloved hands gently under her, and lifted her — no more than an inch — off Sarge’s chest. It was instant.

The moment the contact broke, her eyes flew open. A silent, breathless gasp caught in her throat and did not come back out.

And the monitor beside her, which had been glowing that steady, blessed green, screamed.

Her heart rate fell off a cliff — 140 to 60 in the space of three seconds — and her oxygen numbers went red and dove into the seventies, and her lips, in front of all of us, began to turn blue.