The fluorescent lights of the Des Moines municipal hospital hummed above us.

I pulled the thin cotton blanket over my wrists to hide the red, raw skin.

The fabric chafed against the burns left by the plastic zip-ties.

Across the linoleum hallway, my mother-in-law, Josephine, was screaming.

Two burly hospital security guards held her by the elbows, their rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the floor.

“Get your hands off me!” Josephine shrieked.

Her dyed blonde hair was disheveled, falling across her lined face.

Beside her, my sister-in-law, Melanie, clawed at the other guard’s arm.

“We didn’t do anything to her!” Melanie cried out, her voice cracking. “She’s lying! She did that to herself!”

Leo stood near the nurse’s station, his hand shaking as he held his phone to his ear.

His face was pale, his jaw set so tight I could see the muscles twitching under his stubble.

“Yes, emergency,” Leo said into the receiver. “I need officers at Iowa Methodist immediately.”

He looked at me through the open doorway, his eyes filled with a mixture of rage and deep guilt.

“My mother and sister held my wife against her will,” Leo told the dispatcher. “They tied her up. They neglected our baby.”

“That is a lie!” Josephine roared, her chest heaving under her heavy wool coat.

She glared at Leo, her eyes cold and piercing.

“You ungrateful boy,” she hissed. “After everything I’ve done for you.”

She glanced toward the exit sign at the end of the corridor, then back at Leo.

“We bought that house for you,” Melanie chimed in, adjusting her leather purse. “You wouldn’t even have a down payment without Mom’s money.”

Leo ignored them, his voice steady as he gave the dispatcher our room number.

“They are currently being restrained by hospital security,” Leo said. “Please hurry.”

I reached down into the plastic bassinet beside my bed.

Sam lay there, his tiny chest rising and falling under a yellow blanket.

He was so small, far too light for a six-month-old baby.

The pediatric nurse had spent the last two hours putting fluids back into his dehydrated body.

My fingers brushed his soft cheek, and my heart ached with a cold, physical pain.