Chapter 1 - The Sound of the Flatline
The monitor beside my bed didn’t just beep; it screamed. It was a high-pitched, relentless wail that seemed to slice straight through the chaotic symphony of shouting nurses and clattering metal. I was thirty-three weeks pregnant with twins, and my body was failing. Blood soaked the pristine white hospital sheets, a terrifying crimson tide that was draining the life from me and my unborn children. Dr. Brooks’s hands were a blur of motion, her face a mask of controlled terror, but her voice felt like it was echoing from the bottom of a deep, dark well.
"Push another unit of O-negative! Get her to the OR, now!"
I barely heard her. The cold, clinical lights of the delivery room were fading into a fuzzy, gray static. My eyes were fixed on the narrow rectangular window of the heavy wooden door.
Vanessa Hale was standing out there in the hallway.
She was wearing a luxurious, cream-colored cashmere coat—the exact coat I had found draped over the passenger seat of my husband’s car three weeks ago. When I had confronted him, Daniel had laughed, kissing my forehead and calling me paranoid. “She’s just a client, Claire. She forgot it after dinner.” I had wanted to believe him because the alternative was too devastating for a heavily pregnant woman to bear. So, I swallowed the doubt. I swallowed the intuition that had screamed at me for months.
Now, the truth was standing right outside my door at 1:13 in the morning. And my husband was nowhere in sight.
"Claire, look at me!" Dr. Brooks yelled, her face suddenly blocking my view of the window. "We’re taking you into surgery. The babies need to come out immediately."
"Daniel," I gasped, the word tearing at my dry, sandpaper throat. "Where is Daniel?"
Dr. Brooks hesitated for a fraction of a second. It was a micro-expression of pure pity, and it was more lethal than the hemorrhage. She knew. The nurses knew. The entire maternity ward probably knew. "Don't worry about anything except breathing, Claire," she commanded softly.
I turned my head, my heavy eyelids fluttering toward the glass one last time. Daniel finally appeared. He practically sprinted down the hallway, his tie ripped off, his expensive blue dress shirt wrinkled and untucked. A massive, desperate wave of relief washed over my dying body. He was here. He was going to burst through those doors, grab my hand, and tether me to the earth.
Instead, Vanessa reached out and grabbed his wrist.
Daniel stopped dead in his tracks. He looked at her, then looked through the glass directly at me. I lifted one trembling, blood-stained hand. Come to me, I prayed. Just come to me.
Then, Vanessa smiled.
It wasn't a sympathetic smile. It was a slow, victorious, chilling smirk. The monitor beside me shifted from a frantic rhythm to one long, unbroken tone.
"No pulse! She's flatlining! Start compressions!" someone screamed.
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The last thing I saw before the darkness swallowed me whole was Vanessa Hale covering her mouth with her manicured hand. She wasn't gasping in horror.
She was laughing.
