Chapter 5 - The Rhythm of Life
"Find it," Sarah’s voice sliced through the room, low and deadly as a blade. "Find the heartbeat right now."
"Ma'am, please step back to the curtain line," the nurse ordered, adjusting the dials on the massive grey monitor beside the bed.
I couldn't speak. I couldn't scream. My fingernails dug so deeply into the coarse fabric of the hospital mattress that the seams began to rip. The silence from the machine was a physical weight, pressing down on my chest, crushing my windpipe.
God, please. Take my legs. Take my arms. Take whatever years I have left. Just don't let Margaret win. Don't let them kill my baby.
The technician tilted the transducer at a sharp angle, pressing deep into the soft tissue just above my right pelvic bone.
Static hissed through the speaker. A crackle of white noise.
Then:
Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.
Fast. Furious. Like a miniature galloping horse running through a thunderstorm. 148 beats per minute.
A guttural, sobbing wail tore out of my mouth, and I collapsed back against the elevated pillows, my hands flying up to cover my eyes. The nurse let out a long, slow breath, her shoulders dropping an inch.
"Fetal heart rate is baseline," the technician announced, clicking her keys rapidly. "He’s in transverse lie—turned completely sideways, likely reacting to severe maternal hypertension. That’s why you couldn't feel the kicks; he’s kicking inward toward your spine."
The curtain rattled back, and an older woman with salt-and-pepper hair cut into a sharp bob strode into the bay, snapping a pair of latex gloves onto her hands. Dr. Miller. She had been my OB-GYN since I was nineteen.
She took one look at my blood pressure reading on the wall display—178 over 112—and her face hardened into stone.
"Emily," Dr. Miller said, her voice dropping to a stern, clinical rumble. "Look at me."
I lowered my hands, my face slick with tears and sweat.
"You are in the early stages of severe preeclampsia," she stated bluntly. "Your protein levels are spiking, your pressure is dangerous, and your body is treating this pregnancy like an emergency survival situation. If you go back to that house, if your stress spikes like this again, you will stroke out, or your placenta will abduct. Do you understand what I am telling you?"
"I'm not going back," I sobbed. "I left him, Dr. Miller. I left this morning."
Dr. Miller looked up at Sarah, who nodded once in grim confirmation.
"Good," the doctor said, turning back to the medical cart. "Because you aren't leaving this hospital either. You are on strict, total inpatient bed rest until we deliver this boy. We are keeping you stable, giving you magnesium sulfate to prevent seizures, and if that pressure doesn't drop below 140 within forty-eight hours, we are taking him out via emergency C-section."
Before the nurse could even hang the IV bag of magnesium, the heavy double doors of the labor and delivery ward banged open down the hall.
A loud, demanding, familiar male voice echoed through the sterile corridor.
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"I don't care about your visitor privacy policies! That is my wife, carrying my heir, and I am the primary subscriber on her insurance! Where is Emily Mercer?!"
Daniel was in the building.
