The Desperate Crying of Three Infants on the Train Made Me Rise to My Feet, But When Roman Vale Looked at Me, His Hand Was Trembling

The baby’s skin was turning gray before my eyes, while the entire first-class carriage acted as though it could not hear his crying.

The train from Newark to Philadelphia was rushing quickly, raindrops spreading into long lines on the windows, while at the end of the carriage the voices of three infants collided with one another. They had been crying for almost an hour.

At first I was staring down at my book.

Everyone was doing the same.

The woman with the pearl necklace called the attendant.

“A first-class ticket should also mean peace,” she said and rubbed her temple.

“The babies are sick, ma’am,” the attendant answered.

“Then a hospital is the place for them, not a train.”

The businessman sitting in front of me muttered quietly:

“Some people think money buys everything.”

The old man, meanwhile, removed his hearing aids altogether and put them in his pocket.

But this was not ordinary crying. Three thin, desperate voices rose together, and then one of them gradually weakened. That was what forced me to close my book.

The compartment door had smoked glass. When the door opened slightly, I looked inside.

Roman Vale was standing there.

Everyone knew his face. In New York, Baltimore, and Chicago, almost no one pronounced his name aloud. They said that half the city’s criminal network obeyed him and that he had so much money that politicians could make themselves forget their own past.

But at that moment he did not look dangerous.

He looked frightened.

He had one infant pressed to his chest and was holding a tiny bottle to its lips.

“Please, child,” he whispered. “Just one sip.”

The baby shook its head to the side.

Several opened bottles stood on the table. Different formulas, different powders, different measuring spoons. It was as if Roman had bought everything anyone had ever recommended for a baby.

At the compartment door, his right-hand man, Victor Rowe, was looking at his phone.

“Twenty-eight minutes remain until Washington,” he said. “Kincaid’s people are already at Union Station.”

“The meeting will not be postponed.”

“Roman, the babies need a hospital.”

Roman looked at the infant. The baby’s crying could now be heard only as small, broken sounds.

“If Kincaid has his people in every hospital, where should I take them?” he asked.

Victor could not answer.

Roman smiled bitterly.

“I have enough men to shut down a highway. Enough money to bribe half the city. But I cannot make my children eat.”

Then I noticed that no one mentioned their mother, except once.

“Take Elise’s flowers to the grave tomorrow,” Roman said.

Six-week-old infants. And they no longer had a mother.

I suddenly felt a strong pain in my chest. A few weeks earlier I had held my own baby in my arms. Then he was gone, and my body still had not accepted it. The doctor told me the milk would stop soon, but the body does not understand orders.

The smallest boy was named Judy. His lips were losing their color.

Roman brought the bottle to him again.

“No…” I whispered.

The baby’s fingers trembled and then relaxed.

“The doctor warned us about dehydration,” Victor said.

“I know.”

“They are weakening.”

Roman’s jaw tightened. For the first time I saw a man who had power over everything standing helpless when it came to protecting his own child.

My body made the decision before I did.

I stood up.

The businessman looked at me.

“Ma’am, I do not advise you to go in there.”

Victor took a step toward the door.

“Stop.”

“I can help,” I said.

“Are you a doctor?”

“No.”

“Then go back.”

I looked at Roman. Judy lay almost motionless in his arms.

“I know what your children need,” I said.

Roman looked up at me for the first time. His eyes were so tired that no threat remained in them.

“And what are you offering?”

My hand moved under my jeans, toward the small silver badge. This badge had never left my dead child; I had removed it from the corner of his blanket at the maternity hospital and had worn it over my heart ever since.

I knew what it meant to desperately search for a baby.

I knew what it meant for the body to be deceived when the mother was already gone.

I stopped at the threshold.

“If you allow me, I will give your children my milk.”

Victor’s face immediately hardened.

Roman said nothing.

And I slowly extended my hand toward the black folder lying on the table, on which a dusty medical seal could be seen…

Victor seized the hand extended toward the folder.

“You cannot do this,” he said.

“Then Judy will die,” I answered.

Roman raised his hand.

“Let her go.”

Victor clenched his jaw, but removed his hand from me. I entered the compartment. The air smelled of powdered milk, perfume, and fear.

“Wash your hands,” Roman told me.

“First give me that bottle.”

He looked at me.

“Why?”

“The baby is not only hungry. He is excessively limp.”

Victor snickered.

“Now they are making diagnoses on trains too?”

“I was a nurse in a neonatal unit,” I said. “And I lost my child three weeks ago.”

The laughter vanished at once.

Roman looked toward the door.

“Nine minutes until we stop at the station.”

“Nine minutes may be enough, or there may be nothing left at all.”

He handed me a towel. The silver badge attached to my chest flashed with the movement of my hand. Roman looked at it for a long time.

“Is that the baby’s?”

“My son’s.”

I picked Judy up. His body was light and cold. When I gave him milk, at first he could not swallow, and then his fingers wrapped around my wrist.

Roman held his breath.

“Once more,” I whispered.

The baby drank.

At that same moment, a heavy metallic sound came from outside the compartment. Someone had locked the door.

Victor looked at his phone and turned pale.

“Roman… it is not only Kincaid’s people waiting at the station.”

Roman put the bottle on the table.

“Then who?”

In answer, Victor opened the folder. Roman saw the very first sheet inside and the color drained from his face.

“This is Elise’s handwriting,” he said.

At the bottom of the sheet there was only one sentence:

“Trust Naomi, or you will not save my children…”

“Trust Naomi, or you will not save my children…”

For several seconds no one moved a hand.

Judy was breathing peacefully against my chest, while his two brothers also slowly stopped crying. The train passed beyond the outskirts of Philadelphia, and the rhythmic sound of the wheels remained the only noise in the compartment.

Roman took the sheet from me.

“Where did you find this letter?” he asked Victor.

“In Elise’s bedroom, behind a double wall.”

“Why did you show it to me only now?”

Victor looked toward me.

“Because her instruction had to be carried out today.”

Roman unfolded the letter completely. Small pieces of wax clung to the corners of the paper. I recognized Elise’s handwriting, although I had never met her.

“Roman, if you are reading this letter, I am already gone. Do not trust Leon Kincaid. He knows that my family has a hereditary disease in the children’s blood. But he does not know that Naomi Bell is my sister. Our mother gave her away elsewhere at birth. Naomi’s blood will save all three children. I managed to find her, but not to meet her.”

Roman let the sheet fall from his hand.

“Your sister?” he asked me.

The sound of the train became muffled in my ears.

“I did not have a sister.”

“Mother hid us,” read the second paragraph in the letter, which Roman read aloud. “Naomi’s child was not killed by a disease. The same blood disorder took his life. The doctors falsified his record because you were in Kincaid’s clinic and the truth was evidence against him.”

I leaned against the wall. My silver badge dug into my skin.

“That is impossible,” I said. “The doctors told me that my boy’s heart simply stopped.”

“Elise found an additional record,” Roman said. “Your son’s blood sample was never destroyed.”

Victor suddenly looked at the floor.

Roman noticed.

“You knew?”

“I only knew that Kincaid used the children to apply pressure.”

“What is in the bottles?” I asked.

Victor chose silence.

I took one of the bottles, removed the cap, and checked its smell.

“This formula is mixed with a sedative,” I said. “The babies are weakening not from hunger, but from poisoning.”

Roman slowly turned toward Victor.

“Who gave you this?”

Victor tried to flee, but Roman stepped in front of the door.

“Answer me.”

“Kincaid. He told me they only had to be put to sleep for a few hours.”

“Was Elise’s death also supposed to last only a few hours?” I asked.

Victor looked at me, and precisely in his eyes I understood that this was only the beginning.

Roman’s phone rang. An unknown number was flashing on the screen.

He answered.

“Roman Vale,” a calm voice sounded from the other side. “If you want your children to remain alive, come to Washington alone. And bring Naomi Bell with you.”

The call ended.

Roman slowly lowered the phone.

“They already know that you are alive,” he said.

Outside the window, the station lights appeared. Footsteps approached behind the door. And then I understood that by saving the children I had entered not only Roman’s family—I had also reached the true reason for my son’s death…