Chapter 1 - The Stillness After the Storm
The operating room lights above me hummed with a sterile, white frequency that seemed to vibrate straight into the marrow of my bones.
“Keep your eyes on me, Claire,” Dr. Rebecca Lawson said, her gloved hand resting firmly on my forearm. “We’re almost there. Just stay with me.”
I didn't answer. I didn't have the breath to waste.
My body felt hollowed out, stripped of everything except a cold, crystalline core of survival. Outside the heavy double doors of the surgical suite, the storm battered the glass windows of the hospital, but inside, the air was dead silent save for the frantic, rhythmic beep of the fetal monitor.
Beep. Beep. Beep-beep-beep.
Then the pitch changed. A high, sharp warning tone cut through the room like a scalpel.
“His heart rate is dropping again!” an anesthesiologist yelled, his hands flying across the monitor controls. “Rebecca, we’re losing baseline!”
“Get him out. Now,” Dr. Lawson said, her voice dropping an octave into pure, unflinching command.
The world tilted.
Pain flared through my abdomen, hot and blinding, but beneath the agony, something else took root. A fierce, unyielding anger. Vincent was probably sitting in the back of his imported sedan right now, patting Vanessa’s hand, telling her that everything was going to be fine while his son—*our* son—fought for his first breath alone.
The mask was pressed over my face.
Breathe in, I told myself. Breathe out.
As the anesthesia pulled me under into the dark, I made a silent promise to the ceiling lights overhead.
May you like
When I woke up, the old Claire Hale would be dead.
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