Chapter 2 - Code Crimson
The siren of the ambulance pierced through the Chicago drizzle, but to my ears, it sounded muffled, as though I were underwater.
"Blood pressure is crashing! Eighty over forty-five and dropping!" the paramedic shouted over the roar of the diesel engine. "Push another bag of saline! Hang O-negative right now!"
A plastic oxygen mask was strapped tightly over my face, fogging with every shallow, agonizing breath. Every bump on Lake Shore Drive sent a spike of white-hot agony through my lower abdomen.
"Hold on, sweetheart," the female medic urged, her gloved hands pressing hard against the pelvic binder she had wrapped around me. Her eyes above her surgical mask were wide with urgency. "Northwestern is three minutes out. Stay with me. Focus on my voice!"
"My baby..." I whispered against the plastic, tears pooling in my ears. "Please... don't let it die..."
"We're fighting for you both. Hang on!"
When the ambulance doors swung open, the biting night air hit my skin. Fluorescent lights flashed overhead in a frantic blur as the stretcher was yanked out and slammed onto its wheels.
"Trauma bay three! Twenty-nine-year-old female, blunt force trauma to the lower abdomen, massive internal pelvic hemorrhage! Gravida one, estimated six weeks gestation!"
The trauma doors flew open with a crash.
At that exact moment, fifty feet away in the VIP triage lounge, Vincent Moretti was standing near the reception desk. He had his platinum card out, paying an expedited fee for a private suite so Sophia could have an IV drip for her alleged headache.
Sophia was seated comfortably in an armchair, scrolling through her phone, complaining that the private lounge didn't offer organic almond milk.
Then, the emergency shout echoed down the marble hallway.
"Out of the way! Clear the corridor! Code Crimson coming through!"
A swarm of six doctors and nurses ran alongside the gurney. Blood bags swayed violently on the portable IV poles.
Vincent casually glanced up from the payment terminal, irritated by the noise.
Then he saw the hair. Long, dark auburn waves, drenched in sweat, plastered against a deathly pale face.
He saw the silver wedding band on the limp left hand dangling off the edge of the mattress.
His breath hitched in his throat. The world lost its sound.
"Claire?" he said, the word escaping him like a cracked whisper.
Before his brain could fully process the sight, his feet moved. He crossed the floor in three strides, lunging toward the moving stretcher.
"Claire!"
He reached out and grabbed the metal side rail of the gurney, his knuckles white. The speed of the cart nearly dragged him off his feet.
Her eyes were half-open, staring blankly at the ceiling tiles. Her skin had the grayish, waxy sheen of marble. A sickening pool of crimson was soaking through the white hospital sheets beneath her hips.
"Claire! What happened to you?!" Vincent's voice broke, pitch rising in blind panic. "Look at me! Claire!"
"Sir, get your hands off the rail!" an ER physician barked, shoving Vincent’s broad chest with both hands. "Back off! Let us work!"
"She’s my wife!" Vincent roared, shaking off the doctor's grip with feral fury. He had never lost control in his life—not in boardrooms, not during hostile takeovers. But now, his eyes were wild, his veins bulging against his neck. "What the hell happened to her?! Claire, talk to me!"
The lead trauma surgeon, a stern woman with steel-gray hair, stepped directly into Vincent’s path, blocking him with an immovable, frigid stare.
"Your wife has suffered catastrophic blunt force abdominal trauma," the surgeon snapped ruthlessly. "She is in hemorrhagic shock, and her unborn child is suffocating in utero. If you don't step back this second, they are both going to die on this floor!"
Vincent froze.
The corridor seemed to spin beneath his polished Oxford shoes. The air evacuated his lungs as if he had been punched by an invisible fist.
*Unborn child.*
*Blunt force abdominal trauma.*
The words echoed in his skull, deafening, horrific, tearing through his consciousness like shrapnel.
His mind flashed back to forty-five minutes ago.
The penthouse.
Claire looking at him with tears in her eyes, saying she was done.
His arm swinging.
The sickening *crack* of his hand across her face.
Her body twisting in mid-air, crashing violently into the sharp, solid edge of the mahogany dining table. Her small, desperate hands clutching her belly, sobbing his name.
And Sophia’s voice, purring in his ear: *“Let her learn her lesson.”*
And he had walked away.
He had walked out the door, leaving his pregnant wife bleeding to death on the floor he paid millions to polish.
"No..." Vincent gasped, stumbling backward. The metal rail slipped from his fingers. "No, no, God... no..."
The double doors of Trauma Bay Three slammed shut, the red emergency light illuminating above the entrance.
Behind him, Sophia walked up slowly, her brow furrowed with annoyance.
"Vince? What's going on? Who was that?" She peered at the closed doors, then scoffed under her breath. "Was that Claire? Did she follow us here? Honestly, the lengths she will go to for attention—"
Vincent turned around.
The look on his face stopped Sophia dead in her tracks. Her smirk withered. She took an involuntary step back, clutching her designer handbag against her chest.
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Vincent looked as though he were staring at a monster—or looking into the mirror of one.
***
