Chapter 2 - The Impossible Timeline
The words hung in the sterile air between them like broken glass.
Charles felt as though the oxygen had been entirely sucked from his lungs. Fourteen weeks. Fourteen weeks ago meant May. It meant the time right around his business trip to Miami. It meant that night in the hotel room.
"No," Charles muttered, shaking his head slowly as the pieces violently collided in his mind. "That's... that's impossible. We split up three years ago. We haven't seen each other since the divorce until—until one month ago."
Dr. Hayes maintained his steady, unblinking gaze. "Biology doesn't care about legal documents or timelines, Mr. Miller. Based on the developmental stage of the fetus and Sarah's medical history, conception occurred approximately three months prior to her admission here. Which places it squarely around the time you were both in this city."
Charles backed away a step, his mind reeling. The red stain on the sheet.
That morning in the hotel room, when he had woken up and frozen at the sight of blood on the mattress, Sarah hadn't been hiding a casual hookup or an embarrassing secret from a random encounter. She had been bleeding. She had been losing a child—their child—right there in his hotel bed, and she had panicked, swept it under the rug, and fled before he could ask questions that would unravel her entire life.
"She knew," Charles whispered, the horror dawning on him with suffocating clarity. "When she came to my hotel room that night... she already knew she was pregnant."
"Or she suspected it, and the physical strain of that night triggered the hemorrhage that she tried to ignore for a full month," Dr. Hayes corrected softly. "Which brings us to the most concerning part. Sarah checked herself out of her apartment complex registry weeks ago, lived out of her car for a stretch, and refused medical intervention until she collapsed at a public transit station this morning. She was literally bleeding to death, and she fought the paramedics who tried to bring her here."
"Why?" Charles’s voice cracked, a mixture of overwhelming grief and sudden, burning anger rising in his chest. "Why would she hide something like that? If it was my child, why run away?"
"You'll have to ask her that," Dr. Hayes said, stepping back toward the ward. "She just regained consciousness a few minutes ago. But be warned, Mr. Miller—her emotional state is extremely fragile. She didn't want us to call you. We only did because her legal directives listed you as her permanent emergency contact, and we couldn't reach anyone else."
May you like
Charles stood frozen for a moment, the heavy rain outside drumming a frantic rhythm against the glass. Then, without another word, he turned and walked down the hall toward Room 412.
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