Chapter 4
There was no pain, only a heavy, terrifying numbness from my chest down. The rhythmic, hollow beep… beep… beep of a heart monitor was the only sound in the sterile room. I blinked against the harsh fluorescent lights, trying to orient myself. The walls were painted a sickly, pale institutional green. Tubes snaked out of my arms, and a heavy oxygen cannula sat under my nose.
Instinctively, desperately, I moved my right hand down to my stomach.
It was flat. Covered in thick, tight surgical binders.
The breath caught in my throat. The panic was instantaneous and absolute. “My baby,” I rasped, the sound tearing at my dry, intubated vocal cords. “Where is she? Where is my baby?”
A shadow moved rapidly beside my bed. It wasn’t Ethan.
It was my older sister, Claire.
Her face was ghostly pale, her eyes red, swollen, and bruised with exhaustion. She was wearing the same tailored suit she had worn to her accounting firm the day before, now wrinkled and stained with coffee.
She leaned over the bed guardrail, gently gripping my cold hand. Her fingers were trembling.
“Maddie,” Claire whispered, her voice cracking instantly. “You’re awake. Oh thank God, you’re awake.”
“The baby,” I pleaded, tears instantly spilling over my eyelashes. “Claire, tell me.”
“She’s alive,” Claire said quickly, squeezing my hand tightly. “She’s alive, Maddie. She’s in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. They named her Lily Grace on the provisional chart. She’s… she’s very tiny. And she’s on a ventilator right now because her lungs took a hit, but the doctors say she is fighting. She has a heartbeat.”
I let out a sob of relief that rattled my entire ribcage. I closed my eyes, thanking a God I hadn’t spoken to in years. She was alive.
Then, the reality of the room settled in. The empty chair in the corner. The silence.
“Ethan,” I asked, looking toward the closed hospital door. “Where is Ethan? Did the hospital call him? Does he know?”
Claire’s expression changed. The profound relief in her eyes vanished, replaced instantly by a cold, burning, terrifying fury. I had known Claire my whole life. I had never seen her look like this. It was the look of someone ready to commit murder.
“I went to the house, Maddie,” Claire said quietly, pulling a chair closer to the bed. “After the hospital called me as your secondary emergency contact at 9:00 PM last night. The police called me to secure the property. I saw the shattered glass. I saw the massive pool of blood in the hallway. I saw the smart lock that the fire department had to destroy to get to you.”
“Where is he?” I repeated, a sick knot of dread forming in my stomach.
Claire reached into her purse and pulled out her smartphone. She didn’t look at me as she unlocked the screen.
“He never answered the hospital’s frantic calls,” Claire said, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “When the charge nurse finally got ahold of him on his mother’s phone, he told the nurse to stop calling him because you were just ‘acting out’ and ‘ruining the party.’ He didn’t come, Maddie. He didn’t come when you were bleeding out. But he did go live on Facebook.”
She turned the phone screen toward me.
My breath caught in my throat. I couldn’t look away from the glowing screen, realizing that the nightmare hadn’t ended when I passed out on the floor.
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On the screen was a video Ethan had posted to his public timeline just hours ago, right around the time the surgeon was slicing into my abdomen. The caption read: Family Always Comes First. Happy 65th to the Matriarch!
The video was a livestream from the Oakridge Country Club. The ballroom was bathed in warm, golden light. Crystal chandeliers sparkled overhead. Relatives in expensive suits and evening gowns stood around a massive, five-tiered fondant cake adorned with sparklers.
