“Doctor,” she whispered, “did you hear that?”
Vincent looked up from the chart. “Hear what?”
She rubbed her gloved fingers together, latex squeaking faintly. “Children laughing.”
He let the silence settle before answering. Panic had a way of turning pipes, carts, and ventilation clicks into voices. “The only children in this room are these two,” he said. “And they are no longer capable of laughing.”
Kristina nodded, but her eyes stayed on the twins. She wanted to believe him. She wanted rules to be rules, because if rules could fail in a morgue, then nothing in the hospital was solid.
Vincent began the external examination. He documented skin color, temperature, visible marks, and the condition of the hospital wristbands. He dictated the time, the file number, and the presence of the sealed evidence vial.
He had done this thousands of times. Method mattered. Chain of custody mattered. A grieving family deserved the truth, but truth had to be built carefully, one recorded detail at a time.
Then Kristina touched the first child’s hand.
Her scream struck the tile walls and came back at them.
“She moved,” she said, backing into the instrument tray. Metal rattled behind her. “Her hand touched me.”
