Before she could strike again, a massive hand clamped onto the back of her designer sweater. Alex hauled her up into the air as easily as a ragdoll and shoved her violently away, sending her sprawling into the corner of the room.
“Don’t touch her!” Alex roared, his voice shaking the walls. He stepped in front of me, becoming an impenetrable human shield.
Suddenly, the kitchen was bathed in alternating flashes of harsh red and blue light. The piercing wail of multiple sirens tore through the suburban quiet. The cavalry had arrived.
Within seconds, the front door was kicked open by the police. Flashlights sliced through the darkness, crossing over the room. Radios squawked. Officers flooded the kitchen, their weapons drawn, shouting commands.
“Drop your weapons! Hands in the air!”
The scene was pure chaos, but it was a beautiful kind of chaos. An officer saw Trent nursing his broken arm and immediately roughly handcuffed him, reading him his rights with a cold, professional disdain. Another officer stepped over Richard, calling for a medic to tend to the unconscious man before cuffing him to a stretcher.
A female officer knelt beside me, her face softening. “Ma’am? I’m Officer Davis. The paramedics are right behind me. You’re going to be okay.”
Alex pointed a shaking finger toward the refrigerator. “Under there. The phone. She livestreamed the whole thing. It’s all on there.”
Officer Davis retrieved the cracked phone, slipping it into a plastic evidence bag. “We’ve got it,” she assured him.
The paramedics burst in with a gurney. They worked with terrifying speed, lifting me onto the stretcher, wrapping a blood pressure cuff around my arm, and pressing an oxygen mask over my face. The world became a blur of frantic voices, the smell of antiseptic, and the bouncing of the stretcher as they wheeled me out into the cold night air.
Alex climbed into the back of the ambulance with me, refusing to let go of my hand. The doors slammed shut, enclosing us in a brightly lit, moving emergency room.
“Pulse is racing, blood pressure is dangerously high,” one paramedic, a young man with intense eyes, called out. “We need to check the fetal heart rate, now.”
He pulled up my shirt, exposing my bruised and swollen belly. He applied cold gel and pressed a Doppler monitor against my skin.
He moved the wand.
There was a heavy static hiss from the machine.
He moved it again, pressing a little harder, his brow furrowing in concentration.
More static. A hollow, rushing sound like wind in an empty tunnel.
I stopped breathing. The oxygen mask fogged up. I stared at the paramedic’s face, watching the professional calm crack, replaced by a tense urgency.
“I’m not getting a heartbeat,” he said to his partner, his voice tight. “Give me the ultrasound.”
He switched devices, staring at a small, grainy screen. The ambulance swerved, its sirens wailing a mournful cry as we sped toward the hospital. Alex squeezed my hand so hard I thought my bones would fuse together, his face pale as a ghost.
Seconds ticked by. Five. Ten. Fifteen.
The monitor beside my head showed a flat, green line. A continuous, horrifying beep of absence.
Flatline.
“No,” I choked out, tearing the oxygen mask away. “No, no, no. Please. She was moving. She was just moving.”
“Keep searching,” the older paramedic ordered, adjusting the IV in my arm. “Push fluids. Ma’am, try to stay calm. Your stress is restricting blood flow.”
But how could I be calm? The entire world was collapsing into that single, flat green line. The abuse, the stick, the terror—it had all been leading to this exact moment. Trent had won. He had stolen the only thing that mattered.
“Please, God,” Alex whispered, resting his forehead against the metal rail of the stretcher, tears falling freely onto his tactical jacket.
The young paramedic pressed the wand deep into my lower abdomen, holding his breath, shifting the angle by a fraction of an inch.
The silence stretched, thick and suffocating, waiting for a verdict that could break my soul forever.
Thrum-thrum. Thrum-thrum.
It was faint at first, hidden beneath the static like a secret whispered in a storm.
The paramedic froze, holding his hand perfectly still. He adjusted a dial on the machine.
Thrum-thrum. Thrum-thrum. Thrum-thrum.
