Chapter 2 - The Red Siren
The emergency sirens didn't approach like a standard municipal ambulance response.
Within four minutes of my father hanging up the phone, the quiet, affluent neighborhood of Crestview Drive vibrated with the roar of heavy engines. It wasn't just one city ambulance.
Through the sheer glass windows of Sylvia’s grand living room, blinding strobes of red, blue, and white light washed over the high ceilings, turning the festive Christmas decorations into a chaotic, flashing nightmare. Three city police cruisers, a heavy paramedic unit, and two black, unmarked suburban SUVs with emergency strobes mounted in the grilles screeched to a halt across Sylvia’s manicured front lawn, crushing her prized winter rose bushes under heavy radial tires.
The front door didn't knock. It was thrown open with a violent, metallic bang as four heavily armed United States Marshals, dressed in tactical vests with bold yellow U.S. MARSHAL lettering across their chests, swept into the foyer.
"Federal Officers! Nobody move! Hands where we can see them!" the lead Deputy Marshal roared, his hand resting on the holster at his hip as his eyes swept the dining room.
Sylvia let out a high-pitched shriek, stumbling backward into a side table and knocking over a porcelain nutcracker. David’s law firm colleagues immediately raised their hands into the air, dropping their napkins and backing away from the dining table as if it were rigged with explosives.
"In the kitchen! She’s in the kitchen!" Marcus Vance shouted frantically, pointing toward the swinging wooden doors with both hands raised high above his head. "I’m Marcus Vance, Senior Partner at Sterling Vance! We haven't done anything! It was all David and his mother!"
Two paramedics carrying a heavy, folding titanium stretcher pushed past the Marshals, rushing straight into the kitchen.
I was barely conscious, the world dissolving into white static as a massive contraction clamped down on my uterus. My vision tunneled, showing only the bright fluorescent lights of the ceiling and the dark red pool of fluid beginning to stain the hem of my yellow maternity dress.
"Placental abruption suspected!" the lead female paramedic called out as she knelt beside me, instantly checking my pulse and attaching an automated blood-pressure cuff to my arm. "Systolic is dropping—85 over 50! Pulse is 130! We need a rapid transport to Saint Jude's Women's Hospital immediately! Get the gurney setup!"
"Anna! Anna, please tell them!" David cried out, crawling toward the paramedics on his hands and knees like a dog begging for scraps. He tried to reach for my hand. "Tell them it was an accident! Tell them my mother just bumped into you!"
A Deputy Marshal stepped forward, his heavy tactical boot coming down hard on the tile right between David’s outstretched fingers.
"Step back, sir!" the Marshal barked, his hand slamming against David’s shoulder and shoving him backward against the granite island. "Do not approach the patient!"
"I'm her husband! I have legal rights!" David shrieked, his voice cracking into an ugly, desperate whine. "I’m an officer of the court! I'm a lawyer!"
"You're about to be an inmate if you don't back up!" the Marshal countered, his voice like iron.
The paramedics worked with terrifying speed. They slid a rigid backboard under my body, secured me with black nylon straps, and lifted me onto the gurney. An oxygen mask was strapped over my nose and mouth, filling my lungs with cool, sweet air that helped push back the darkness creeping into the corners of my eyes.
As they rolled my gurney out of the kitchen, through the dining room where the half-eaten Christmas turkey sat cold on Sylvia's fine china, I looked sideways.
Sylvia was pressed against the wall, her face pale, her perfectly coiffed hair sticking to her sweaty forehead. She looked at me, not with anger anymore, but with profound, paralyzing horror. She had spent three years treating me like an uneducated, destitute charity case her son had foolishly picked up from a rural state college. She had forced me to clean her floors, polish her silver, and stand in her kitchen while her wealthy friends laughed in the next room.
Now, she watched as four federal officers formed a protective honor guard around my stretcher.
"Anna..." Sylvia whimpered, reaching out a trembling, manicured hand. "Anna, sweetie... we’re family... please..."
I didn't say a word. I simply pulled my eyes away from her, looking up at the ceiling as the paramedics wheeled me through the front door into the freezing December air.
Outside, the snow was falling in large, gentle flakes, illuminated by the flashing crimson lights of six emergency vehicles. Standing beside the lead black SUV, holding an encrypted satellite phone to his ear, was a tall man in a dark wool overcoat and a gray suit.
It was Agent Thomas Burke, the Chief Security Officer for the Supreme Court's Marshal Office.
"We have her," Burke said into the phone as the paramedics slid my gurney into the back of the ambulance. "She’s stable but critical. Transporting to Saint Jude’s now under armed escort."
Burke walked over to the back of the ambulance, looking down at me with deep respect and concern. He had known me since I was twelve years old, back when he was a young Secret Service detail officer assigned to my father’s federal circuit court security.
"Your father is on the C-32 military transport out of Andrews Air Force Base right now, Miss Vance," Burke said softly, taking my cold hand in his gloved palm. "He’ll be at the hospital before you come out of triage. Hold on."
"The baby..." I choked out under the plastic oxygen mask, tears melting the cold snowflakes landing on my cheeks. "Thomas... please... save my baby..."
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"The best pediatric trauma surgeons in the state are waiting in the ER," Burke promised, his jaw clenching as he looked back toward the house where David was being questioned by two police officers on the porch. "Rest now, Anna. The Chief Justice has already handled the rest."
The heavy rear doors of the ambulance slammed shut, locking out the noise, the lights, and the horror of Crestview Drive. The siren wailed into the winter night, and the world went completely black.
