By then, my consciousness was slipping. In the last moment before everything went dark, all I saw was Glenda pulling him toward the door.
Despair—absolute, bottomless despair—crashed over me.
When I opened my eyes again, the sharp sting of antiseptic filled my nostrils.
A wave of pain tore through my lower body, and I groaned before I could stop myself. Then someone seized my hand and held on tight.
"Stella!!"
Mom. Dad.
My mother's usually immaculate hair was in disarray, her eyes swollen and raw. The moment she saw me awake, her voice cracked. "Stella, it's okay. It's going to be okay..."
It took me a beat to register what was happening. I was on a hospital bed, being rushed down a corridor toward the operating room.
"Doctor, the patient is hemorrhaging!"
"The baby is likely lost. Where's her husband? We need his signature for the procedure."
"She's my daughter—I can sign! Doctor, please, you have to save her—"
"Per hospital policy, for an emergency procedure like this, we need the patient's husband present. There may be implications for her future fertility."
The doctor's urgent instructions, my mother's desperate pleas, my father's barely contained fury—all of it tangled together in a deafening knot.
I lay on the bed gasping for air, riding out wave after wave of searing pain. Then I heard my father on the phone with Ivan.
"Ivan Vance! Get yourself to this hospital. Now."
On the other end, Ivan's voice was tinged with surprise. "Dad? Is Stella throwing a fit about going to the hospital again? Ever since she got pregnant, she's been paranoid—always convinced something's wrong with the baby."
"It's just a pregnancy. A friend of mine was a few months along and still unclogging her own toilet, changing lightbulbs, hauling packages."
"Stella's just too high-maintenance."
Accusation after accusation. My father finally snapped. I heard him speak through gritted teeth: "If you don't get here right now, the Hayward family will never let this go."
Ivan had started his own company, but a significant portion of his connections had come through my father's introductions. On the other end of the line, there was a moment of hesitation.
But just then, a woman's panicked cry came through the phone.
"Ivan! Cooper just threw up—"