Chapter 3 - Trauma One
The ride in the heavy armored ambulance felt like an eternity suspended between life and death. The siren screamed through the quiet Virginia streets, escorting three tactical SUVs that cleared every intersection before we even reached it.
Inside, the medic kept his fingers pressed firmly against my wrist, monitoring my erratic pulse while an IV line pumped saline and anti-hemorrhagic agents into my arm.
"Hold on, Maya," the medic urged, adjusting the monitor. "Five minutes out from Walter Reed. They've already cleared Trauma Bay Four. Dr. Harrison is waiting."
"Is my baby... is his heart still beating?" I begged, tears blinding me.
The medic placed a portable Doppler probe onto my lower abdomen. For three agonizing seconds, there was only static—a loud, rushing white noise that made my soul freeze. Then, faintly through the speaker, came a fast, rhythmic thump-thump-thump-thump.
"He's fighting, ma'am," the medic smiled softly. "He's a Vance. He's tough."
When the rear doors burst open at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, a team of eight doctors and nurses in blue surgical scrubs swarmed the vehicle. I was wheeled through double doors under bright, blinding LED lights.
Standing in the center of the trauma bay, wearing his full Four-Star service dress uniform covered in rows of campaign ribbons, was my father.
General Thomas Vance stood six-foot-three, his hair iron-gray, his jaw set like granite. But as his eyes locked onto my blood-stained scrubs, his posture cracked for a split second.
"Daddy..." I sobbed, reaching my hand out.
He caught my hand in both of his—huge, calloused hands that had held rifles, maps, and my tiny fingers when I was a little girl.
"I'm here, Maya," he said, his voice thick with an emotion he rarely showed the world. "I'm right here. You're safe now."
"I tried to stay... I tried to make it work..."
"Shh," he sternly cut me off, leaning down to kiss my forehead. "You did nothing wrong. You protected my grandson. Now let the doctors do their job."
Dr. Harrison, the chief of maternal-fetal medicine, stepped between us. "General, we need to move her to Operating Room Three immediately. Severe placental abruption. We need to perform an emergency Cesarean section within the next ten minutes to save both of them."
My father squeezed my fingers once, tight and firm. "I'll be right outside those doors, sweetheart. I'm not going anywhere."
As they wheeled me down the polished hallway toward the operating theater, I looked back once. My father was no longer looking at me. He was turning toward his aide-de-camp, a crisp young Marine Corps captain holding a secure digital tablet.
"Captain," my father commanded, his voice turning back into the cold iron that had led armies.
"Sir!"
"Contact the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Tell him I want every financial record, every phone log, and every legal brief associated with Carter Ellison and Reed & Vance pulled by midnight."
"Understood, General. And his mother?"
My father’s eyes narrowed into slits of dark, absolute fury. "Contact the state tax board and code enforcement. I want her charitable foundation audited line by line. If she stepped on a sidewalk crack in 1982, I want a charge generated."
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The double doors of Operating Room Three slammed shut behind me, sealing out the world as the anesthesia mask was pressed over my face. As the cold darkness swept over my mind, my last thought was not of the pain, or the blood, or Carter's cruel laughter.
It was the realization that the storm my ex-husband had spent two years building was about to consume him whole.
