Chapter 2 - Playing the Grieving Husband
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The lights of the ambulance flashed red and white against the hospital bay doors at St. Matthew’s Hospital. Everything after the paramedics arrived felt like a blur of frantic voices, cutting shears, and cold intravenous lines.
“Severe second-degree burns across the chest, right arm, and neck,” a paramedic shouted as they wheeled my gurney down the trauma corridor. “Fetal distress detected! She’s thirty-two weeks pregnant!”
I gasped for air, tears blinding my vision. “Save Clara... please, save my baby...”
A team of doctors and nurses surrounded my bed. Monitors beeped frantically as sticky sensors were slapped onto my chest and stomach.
“Her heart rate is dropping!” an OB-GYN warned, looking at the fetal monitor. “The stress and trauma are forcing early labor. We need to perform an emergency C-section right now, or we lose the child.”
Before they wheeled me into the operating room, the curtain pulled back. Julian rushed in, his eyes wide with tears, clutching a handkerchief.
“Elena! Oh God, baby, hold on!” Julian cried out loudly, making sure every nurse in the room could hear him. He grabbed my uninjured left hand, squeezing it with dramatic desperation.
“I’m so sorry this happened to you,” Julian whispered, leaning down close to my ear. His grip tightened just enough to cause pain. “You should have just signed the house over, Elena. Look what your stubbornness caused.”
I looked into his eyes and saw no remorse—only calculated coldness masked beneath crocodile tears.
“Doctor,” Julian sobbed aloud to the room. “Please save my poor wife! She’s my whole world!”
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I closed my eyes as the anesthesiologist placed a mask over my face. I stayed silent, holding back my rage. My father had taught me a crucial lesson before he died: panic destroys evidence, but patience preserves truth.
I would survive this. And when I woke up, I would make them pay.
