PART 2: Seconds Before Silence
“Why?” I managed to ask as medication flowed through my veins and a fresh wave of pain ripped through my abdomen. “Mr. Sterling… why were you outside my house?”
Warren Sterling swallowed hard. He pulled a white handkerchief from the pocket of his jacket and carefully wiped the cold sweat from my forehead. This man was the founder of the enormous business empire where my husband, Vance Mercer, had spent seven years trying to climb the ladder. Now he sat beside me in an ambulance, wearing an expression of anguish I never would have expected from someone so powerful.
“My private investigator confirmed your identity barely two hours ago, Natalie,” he answered as the sirens wailed around us. “I had no idea you were married to Vance Mercer. We sent two certified letters over the past six weeks, but we never received a reply.”
My heart clenched. Suddenly I remembered a cream-colored envelope I had once found torn open by our front door. Vance had said it was corporate junk mail and tossed it before I could look at it.
“He knew,” I whispered. “Vance got a certified letter five weeks ago. I remember seeing his signature on the delivery receipt.”
Warren stared at me, horrified. We understood in the same instant that my husband hadn’t only abandoned me in a medical emergency to go to a party. He might also have deliberately hidden communications about my real family.
Before either of us could say more, the ambulance braked hard in front of Harborview Medical Center. The rear doors flew open, and several medical staff rushed over with a gurney, their rain jackets glistening under the entrance lights.
“Obstetric emergency!” the paramedic announced. “Possible placental abruption and signs of severe fetal distress! We need immediate intervention!”
The hospital lights streamed across my face, one after another, as they wheeled me down the corridor toward the operating room. Warren ran beside the gurney, one hand gripping the rail as if he could hold me to this world by sheer will.
An obstetrician leaned over me and spoke with a gravity that froze me with fear.
“Natalie, your baby isn’t getting enough oxygen. We have to perform an emergency C-section.”
“Please, save him!” I begged through tears. “Do whatever it takes, but save my son!”
A nurse prepared the consent forms while the team organized the procedure around me, a blur of gloves and gowns and clipped, urgent voices. “Is your husband, Vance Mercer, here?” she asked.
I shook my head weakly. “No. He’s not coming.”
Something crossed the nurse’s face, pity or anger, I couldn’t tell. She lowered her pen.
Then Warren stepped up beside my gurney. His face had lost all of the impenetrable authority he wore in corporate meetings.
“I’m her father,” he declared, his voice firm even as his hands trembled. “Please do everything medically necessary to save my daughter and my grandson. Don’t worry about the cost.”
I wanted to take his hand and ask why it had taken him so many years to find me. I wanted to tell him I was scared, that I didn’t want to lose my baby, that I still couldn’t understand how my life had been torn apart in just a few hours.
But a mask settled over my face, and the words dissolved before they reached my lips.
The operating room was freezing. Bright lamps burned above me like small white suns. I heard the team calling out rapid instructions and felt the strange, heavy pull of anesthesia carrying me down.
I fought it. I fixed my eyes on the ceiling and counted my own heartbeats, because I had to keep counting, because my son’s heartbeat was the only one that mattered.
Then a different alarm sounded.
A continuous, shrill, terrifying beep.
The fetal monitor had stopped registering my son’s heartbeat.
And as everything slowly faded before my eyes, the last thing I heard was a doctor shout:
“We have to get the baby out right now!”
