She was also the only person in that hospital who had never been afraid to tell Cameron Bennett he was wrong.
“What happened?” she demanded.
No one answered fast enough.
Elena’s gaze flicked from the monitor to my face, then to the sheet beneath me. Her expression changed by only a fraction, but I saw it. Recognition. Calculation. Urgency.
“Massive postpartum hemorrhage,” she said. “Get anesthesia back on. Two large-bore IVs. Type and cross. Call the blood bank now.”
Cameron seemed to jerk back into his own body.
“Elena, I had it under control—”
She didn’t even look at him.
“You don’t.” Her voice was not loud, but it landed like a door slamming. “Step away from my patient.”
My patient.
Not his wife.
Not his mistake.
My patient.
Those words followed me into the dark.
I did not remember closing my eyes. I remembered hands moving around me, quick and purposeful. I remembered someone saying my son’s Apgar score was improving. I remembered trying to ask if he was all right, but my mouth would not obey.
Then I remembered Cameron’s voice, close to my ear at last.
“Amelia,” he said. “Stay with me.”
It was the first time he had sounded afraid.
And all I could think, as the room slipped away, was that fear had arrived too late to be love.
When I woke, the world smelled different.
Not antiseptic and heat and panic.
Lavender.
Clean sheets.
A soft rhythmic beeping.
For a moment, I thought I was home. Then I tried to move, and a deep, aching heaviness pulled me back into the hospital bed.
My eyelids fluttered open.
The ceiling above me was pale gray. A curtain divided the room from the doorway. Beyond the window, dawn had begun to press a thin silver line over the city.
My throat felt scraped raw.
