Chapter 2 - The Assessment of Ruin
Outside the trauma room, the hospital was a machine of efficient, clinical noise. Inside, the silence between the heart monitor's beeps was deafening.
Beep... beep... beep...
The monitor was too fast. My daughter’s heart rate was climbing, a frantic, tiny engine trying to survive on a dry tank.
“Lucy,” Dr. Jenkins said softly, her eyes scanning the ultrasound screen. Her jaw was set in that specific, rigid way doctors use to hide fear. “The placenta is showing signs of early stress due to the prolonged oxygen deprivation. Your blood pressure is dangerously high. We’re going to start you on magnesium sulfate to prevent seizures and protect her brain. But you need to calm down. I need your heart rate under a hundred.”
“How…” I swallowed, my throat raw. “How is she?”
“She’s fighting,” Sarah said, her voice softening just a fraction. “She’s your daughter, Lucy. She’s tough. But you have to fight with her. You need to let go of whatever is making your adrenaline spike like this.”
I wanted to laugh. I wanted to scream.
How do you let go of the realization that your entire marriage was a beautifully constructed lie?
Every time Alex had told me he loved me. Every time he had kissed my growing belly. Every time he had promised that his delay, his absence, his broken commitments were just "the job."
“The job.”
It wasn’t the job. It was Valerie. It had always been Valerie.
The double doors of the ER burst open down the hall. I didn’t need to see to know who it was. The heavy, hurried stride was unmistakable.
“Where is she? Where is Lucy Davis?” Alex’s voice boomed through the corridor, thick with panic, commanding and desperate.
“Lieutenant, you can’t go back there,” a nurse’s voice protested.
“That’s my wife! I was the extracting officer on her block! I need to see her!”
In the trauma room, Sarah looked at me. She knew. She had seen the look on my face, had known me long enough to read the wreckage in my eyes.
“Do you want him in here, Lucy?” she asked quietly.
May you like
I looked down at my bare left hand. The skin where my wedding band had sat for three years was white and deeply indented, a ghostly reminder of a promise that had evaporated in an elevator shaft.
“No,” I whispered. “Don’t let him near me.”
