Chapter 4 - The Price of Redemption
The emergency room at St. Jude’s Memorial was overwhelmed. The storm had knocked out regional power grids, bringing a steady stream of car accident victims and hypothermia cases through the sliding glass doors.
When Nora rolled Claire through the ambulance bay on a gurney she had dragged from the bay entrance, shouting that she had a severe placental abruption in progress, the head trauma team reacted instantly.
“OB-GYN code blue to Operating Room Four!” a loudspeaker blared.
Claire was wheeled under bright, surgical lights. Faces blurred above her—nurses, scrub techs, an older male surgeon with tired, sharp eyes.
“Vitals?” the surgeon shouted, pulling on his sterile gloves.
“Pressure sixty over forty!” a nurse yelled. “Fetal heart rate is eighty and falling fast! We’re losing the baby!”
“Prep her for an emergency C-section!” the surgeon ordered. “General anesthesia! Move, move!”
Claire felt the cold bite of an oxygen mask pressed over her face. She reached up, her bloody fingers catching the surgeon’s sleeve.
“Save... my son...” she choked out through the mask.
The surgeon looked into her eyes, seeing the absolute, fierce desperation of a mother who had dragged herself through hell. “I’m going to do my job, ma'am. You just sleep.”
The sweet, heavy scent of the anesthetic flooded her lungs. The bright surgical lights spun into a circle of brilliant white, and then the world went completely black.
...
When Claire opened her eyes again, the world was quiet.
The harsh roar of the storm was gone, replaced by the soft, rhythmic hum of a hospital room’s monitoring equipment. Sunbeams were pouring through a high window, casting warm, golden rectangles across the white blanket covering her chest.
She blinked slowly, her head heavy, her mouth tasting of metal and dry cotton.
She turned her head. Sitting in a chair beside the bed was Nora, her eyes rimmed with red, holding a plastic cup of lukewarm coffee.
Claire’s heart leaped into her throat. Her hand instinctively flew to her belly.
It was flat.
Panic, icy and sudden, seized her chest. “Nora...” she rasped, her voice barely a breath. “Nora... where is he?”
Nora immediately set her coffee down and leaned over the bed, taking Claire’s hand in her warm, dry palms. A soft, weary smile broke across the nurse’s lined face.
“He’s in the neonatal ICU, Claire,” Nora whispered, tears brimming in her eyes. “He’s small—five pounds, eight ounces—and he needed a little help breathing at first. But he’s alive. He’s breathing on his own now.”
Claire let out a ragged, sob-choked breath, closing her eyes as tears spilled hot over her cheeks. “He’s alive...”
“He’s a fighter,” Nora said gently. “Just like his mother. The surgeon said five more minutes down in that tunnel, and it would have been too late. You saved him, Claire.”
The door to the private room opened softly. A nurse stepped in carrying a small, clear plastic bassinet lined with blue blankets.
“Look who’s ready to meet his mother,” the nurse said warmly, wheeling the bassinet to the side of Claire’s bed.
Claire lifted herself up, ignoring the sharp, pulling pain of her C-section incision. She reached into the bassinet and gently lifted the tiny, swaddled bundle into her arms.
He was miniature, perfect, with a thick mop of dark hair and tiny, pale fingers that flexed against the blue fleece. He opened his eyes—a striking, intense, slate-blue—and looked directly at her.
Claire pulled him against her chest, her chin resting on his forehead, sobbing softly into his swaddling. “I’ve got you,” she whispered. “I’ve got you, my sweet boy. No one is ever going to put you second. Ever.”
“What are you going to name him?” Nora asked softly from the corner.
Claire looked down at her son’s face. “Julian,” she said without hesitation. “Julian Bennett.”
Not Caruso. He would never carry the name of the man who had left him to die.
The quiet of the morning was shattered by the sharp sound of heavy footsteps echoing down the hallway outside.
A shadow crossed the frosted glass of the hospital room door. The handle turned, and the door swung open.
Vincent stood in the threshold.
He looked uncharacteristic, undone. His expensive tailored wool coat was damp and rumpled, his hair disheveled, his jaw covered in a dark stubble. His dark eyes swept over the room, locking onto Claire holding the swaddled baby in her arms.
Relief, sharp and intense, washed over his features, followed immediately by a surge of his familiar, possessive authority. He stepped into the room, closing the door behind him.
“Claire,” he said, his voice deep, gravelly from lack of sleep. “Thank God. I’ve been searching every hospital in the county for eight hours.”
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Claire did not pull the blanket up. She did not shrink back into the pillows. She looked at him with an expression so cold, so entirely devoid of emotion, that Vincent stopped two feet from the bed as if he had run into an invisible wall.
“Get out,” Claire said.
