“Don’t call anyone,” he said, his voice low, cracked, carrying authority even while bleeding out.
She had already reached for her phone.
“I said don’t,” he repeated, and this time there was something sharper beneath the weakness, something practiced and dangerous, something that made Iris pause despite herself.
The man was bleeding badly, at least two gunshot wounds, one torn through his side, another lodged deep near his shoulder, and yet his hands never loosened around the babies, one swaddled in pink, the other blue, their cries echoing against concrete like a countdown.
“I brought your order,” Iris said stupidly, as though routine could anchor reality, setting the delivery bag down and kneeling despite every survival instinct screaming for her to run.
He laughed once, a broken sound. “Good. They were hungry.”
She worked automatically, nursing-school reflexes resurfacing after years of disuse, tearing open bandages, pressing gauze, checking the babies when one began to choke on her sobs, lifting the tiny girl and patting her back until air rushed back into her lungs, and in that moment Iris forgot everything else, forgot the blood, the building, the danger, because no matter who the man was, no matter what he’d done, the babies were innocent, and innocence demanded action.
“Four hours,” he whispered when she asked how long they’d been there. “Maybe five.”
“You would’ve died,” Iris said, anger rising unexpectedly.
“I’ve survived worse.”
