Chapter 2 - The Knife's Edge
The metallic click of the laryngoscope hitting the stainless steel tray was the loudest sound in the trauma bay.
"Suction! More suction!" Dr. Al-Mansoor barked, his scrubs already speckled with dark venous blood. "I’ve got visual on the foreign body. It’s lodged transverse across the posterior pharyngeal wall, abutting the left pyriform sinus. Forceps—now!"
Hannah’s body bucked violently against the gurney straps. Her knuckles, white and swollen from the late stage of pregnancy, clawed at the air until my fingers found hers. When she felt my grip, her tear-slicked eyelids fluttered open. Her brown eyes, usually brimming with quiet warmth, were bloodshot and wide with primal, animalistic terror. Her mouth remained propped open by the metal retractor, a thin tube of plastic whistling as it fought to keep her airway patent.
"I’m right here, baby," I whispered, my voice breaking into jagged shards as I leaned over the guardrail. "Look at me. Look only at me. Clara is going to make it. You are going to make it."
Beneath the sterile blue drape, the external fetal monitor gave a long, sickening dip. The digital readout plummeted: 108... 95... 82 beats per minute.
"Deceleration!" the labor and delivery nurse screamed, slamming her palm against the code button. "Fetal bradycardia! Doctor, she’s slipping into distress. If we don’t get her oxygen saturation up past ninety-four percent in the next ninety seconds, we have to cut her open right here!"
"Hold her head still!" Al-Mansoor commanded, perspiration rolling down the bridge of his nose into his surgical mask. "Mr. Vance, pin her shoulders down! If she swallows now, this fragment will perforate the carotid sheath!"
I planted my hands onto Hannah’s trembling shoulders, pressing my weight down to keep her immobilized. Every muscle in my chest screamed in agony. I was holding my eight-month-pregnant wife down while a surgeon fished jagged bone shards from her shredded throat, all because my own mother wanted ninety million dollars.
With a sickening, wet tear, Al-Mansoor’s long forceps retracted. Clamped between the serrated steel teeth was a three-inch spine of carp, thick and needle-tipped, dripping with pink foam and clotted blood.
"First one out," Al-Mansoor panted, dropping it onto the tray with a sharp clink. "Going back in for the second fragment. Suction the bed! Clear the blood!"
Hannah gagged, an involuntary spasm arching her spine. A second, smaller splinter came out, followed by a torrent of bright red bile.
"Airway clear! Bag her!"
The respiratory therapist jammed an ambu-bag over her nose and mouth, pumping rich, pressurized oxygen into her bruised lungs. For four agonizing seconds, the fetal monitor remained in the low eighties. Then, like a miracle dragged out of hell, the steady, rhythmic *thump-thump-thump* surged back upward: 115... 130... 145 beats per minute.
"Fetal heart rate stabilizing," the nurse whispered, exhaling a breath she seemed to have held for ten minutes. "Maternal oxygen at ninety-six percent. The bleeding in the pharynx is slowing, but the mucosal tear is deep. She needs an immediate bedside endoscopy to cauterize the micro-punctures."
I sank against the gurney, my knees trembling so hard they nearly buckled. Hannah’s grip on my hand loosened as the intravenous sedative finally took hold, her eyelashes fluttering shut, her breathing settling into a raspy, mechanical hiss through the oxygen mask.
Before I could kiss her forehead, my phone vibrated violently against my hip.
It was Eleanor again.
I stepped backward toward the swinging double doors of Trauma Bay 4, my fingers slick with Hannah’s blood as I swiped the red bar and brought the phone to my ear.
"You took an ambulance, Logan," Eleanor’s voice came through the line, cold, measured, and entirely devoid of human panic. "Do you have any idea how many board members live in Oakridge? The sirens woke up half the subdivision. Julian had to lie to Mrs. Abernathy and tell her your wife had a hysterical fainting spell."
"You fed her fish bones, Mother," I said, my voice dropping so low it sounded like gravel grinding in a concrete mixer. "You forced them down her throat while she was on her knees."
"Don't be dramatic. It was an unfortunate dining accident caused by Hannah's clumsy agitation," Eleanor replied smoothly, though I could hear the faint clink of her crystal scotch glass in the background. "Regardless, you need to bring her home. Now. We have a private physician on retainer who can manage whatever slight laceration she has. If you register this incident into the county hospital’s trauma registry, child protective services and the press will catch wind. Do you want the Vance Global IPO ruined over a domestic dispute?"
"Week thirty-five," I said.
The line went completely dead. The faint ambient murmur of Eleanor’s drawing room vanished.
"What did you say?" she asked, her tone suddenly razor-thin.
"Week thirty-five ends on Friday," I said, staring at the blood beneath my fingernails. "Dad’s testamentary trust. Sixty percent of the voting shares transfer unconditionally to my legal issue upon reaching thirty-five weeks of viable gestation. You didn't care about an affair. You wanted her to miscarry before midnight on Thursday."
A pause stretched between us, so long and toxic that I could hear Eleanor's shallow intake of breath.
"You always were an ungrateful boy," she whispered, the mask of maternal authority finally cracking to reveal the predator beneath. "Your father built that empire with my family's seed capital. I will not allow a nameless little secretary from the outer boroughs to bear an heir that strips me of my life's work. Bring her home, Logan. If you don't, you will find out very quickly what happens to sons who try to starve their own mothers."
"Touch her again," I said, "and I will burn the entire company to the ground with you inside it."
May you like
I hung up and smashed the end button. Turning to the charge nurse, I pulled out my black titanium credit card. "I want armed private security posted at every entrance to this ward. If anyone with the last name Vance steps off that elevator, you call the police immediately."
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