The sound did not belong in a room where a child had just been born.
One moment, there had been a cry.
Small. Furious. Alive.
The next, there was only the flat, merciless alarm of a monitor insisting that something inside me had stopped keeping time with the world.
For a strange, suspended second, I could see everything with impossible clarity.
The surgical lights above me were too bright, ringed with halos. A nurse’s gloved hand hovered over my shoulder. Someone had wrapped my son in a pale blue blanket and turned away so quickly I saw only the curve of his cheek, pink and trembling, before he disappeared toward the warmer.
And Cameron—
Cameron stood frozen at the foot of the bed.
Not the composed obstetrician respected by half the hospital. Not the brilliant doctor whose calm had once made me feel safe during storms, blackouts, and the worst nights in the emergency department.
He looked like a man who had just reached for a door and found an abyss on the other side.
“Move,” someone snapped.
The voice cut through the alarm.
Dr. Elena Reyes pushed through the double doors, already in a sterile gown, her dark hair tucked under a cap, her eyes taking in the scene with terrifying speed.
She was the head of maternal-fetal medicine.
