Part 4 — When Two Dead Twins Moved at the Same Time in the Morgue, Doctor Frederick Suddenly Turned Pale

Because he is no longer there…

Daniel grabbed Alex by the coat.

“Where did you take him?”

Alex no longer smiled. For the first time, real fear appeared on his face.

The radio was still making noise. Fire trucks were on their way to the old clinic. In Storage Room Twelve, the smoke was increasing, while behind the door someone kept striking the wall with a small hand.

“Tell me the address!” Daniel shouted.

“I did not take him,” Alex said.

“Then who did?”

Frederick raised his head.

“His mother.”

Alex rushed at him, but Daniel stepped in front of him.

“Do not touch him.”

Frederick continued in a trembling voice:

“Elene and Nora knew nothing about Ioane until their mother saw this recording. She deliberately brought the children to the brink of death so that the police would believe everything. Then she took Ioane to the clinic herself.”

“Where is the woman now?” I asked.

Frederick looked into my eyes.

“On the upper floor. In the old operating room.”

Daniel left two police officers with Alex and ran toward the door with me. A sharp smell of chlorine hung in the corridor. My shoes slid on the wet floor, but I could not stop.

The old clinic was five streets away from the morgue. Cold rain was falling outside. The red lights of the fire truck left shifting spots on the walls of the building.

“The smoke is coming from the second floor!” a firefighter shouted.

We rushed inside.

The smell of burnt plastic hung on the staircase. Somewhere above, a child was crying.

“Mother!” the voice could be heard. “I can’t breathe!”

“Ioane!” I shouted. “I am Christina. Follow my voice!”

“The door won’t open!”

Daniel swung the iron crowbar. The door moved twice, and on the third time it collapsed. In the room, a little boy sat on the floor, his hands clasped around his throat. Beside him stood the girls’ mother, Larisa, extinguishing a burned curtain with water.

“Give me the child!” I said.

“Look after my girls first!” she shouted. “Alex will kill them if you take Ioane away!”

“The girls are in the hospital and they are alive.”

Larisa’s face relaxed.

“Alive?”

“Both of them.”

The empty bottle fell from her hand onto the floor.

“I only needed time,” she said. “Alex would take them away. He has been doing this for years. He hid Ioane from me so that his father’s property would remain with only one heir. When I learned the truth, I no longer knew whom I should turn to.”

“Poisoning the children was not a solution.”

“I know.”

She said this one word as if she had fit an entire life into those two syllables.

I lifted Ioane into my arms. His pajamas were saturated with the smell of smoke, and he wore one small green sock on his foot. He clung to my neck.

“Are my sisters really alive?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s go to them.”

When we arrived at the hospital, Elene and Nora were already lying with oxygen masks. Their wrists were covered with IV tubes. As soon as we brought Ioane into the room, both opened their eyes.

“Brother,” Nora whispered.

Ioane stood between the beds and cried so quietly that only his shoulders moved.

Alex was arrested that same night. Larisa remained in the hospital under police supervision. Frederick confessed his own crime, and the lawyer even refused to meet with him.

But Alex still did not give up control.

In the morning he called every telephone. First he called the hospital director, then Child Protective Services, and finally left a call redirected to me.

“Tell them that a mistake happened,” he demanded. “If the recording disappears before the trial, we will protect everyone.”

“Whom do you mean by ‘everyone’?”

“You too. Believe me, Christina, this case will destroy your life.”

“My life was being destroyed when you left the children in the morgue.”

“You do not understand how this world works.”

“Now I understand.”

That same evening Daniel officially transferred the video recording into the case materials. He made Alex listen to his own voice. In the room there was only a small table, a dark monitor, and four chairs.

His words from the recording rang out:

“If these two wake up, everything is over.”

Alex was looking at the screen.

“I did not say that.”

Daniel rewound the audio.

“If these two wake up, everything is over.”

“It is your voice,” I said.

“The recording has been altered.”

“Your face accompanies your words too,” Daniel told him.

Alex buried his head in his hands. For the first time he saw himself as others saw him: not as a strong man, but as a frightened person who had considered two children his property.

Several weeks later I entered the old clinic again. Storage Room Twelve was sealed. In the corner only one object remained — the purple ribbon, whose little silver bell had been blackened by smoke.

I picked it up in my hand.

The bell no longer rang.

But that day I understood for the first time that silence does not always mean death.

Three months later, the girls and Ioane lived near me, in a small house of the Child Protection Center. Larisa awaited trial. Alex remained in custody. Frederick testified and could no longer escape paying the price of his own crime.

And I moved from the morgue to the hospital’s children’s department. Every morning there were three glasses of juice on the windowsill. Elene drank apple, Nora drank peach, and Ioane mixed both of them and said that this was better.

One evening they were drawing at the kitchen table. Ioane drew four people on the paper: three children and a woman holding a little bell in her hand.

“Who is this?” I asked.

“You,” he answered.

“I am not holding a bell.”

“Now you are. When you heard us, you made us heard too.”

I could not find an answer to these words.

When the first snow of winter came, I received a letter from Alex. The envelope contained only one sentence: “Come and see me, let’s start everything over.”

For a long time I looked at his handwriting. Earlier I probably would have gone. I would have tried to justify his fear, soften his crime, and hide the truth from the children.

But now I folded the letter and put it in the trash bin.

Then I followed the children into the snow.

Elene ran ahead, Nora followed behind, and Ioane held my hand tightly. I had attached the purple ribbon to my coat. The ribbon that I had seen in the girl’s hair that night and that had made me notice life in the room of death.

The wind blew.

The little silver bell rang for the first time.

This time the sound belonged to life.