Chapter 1 - SEVENTEEN UNANSWERED CALLS
“Caleb, I cannot feel the baby moving.”
The words left my mouth as my husband dropped to his knees beside me.
I was curled against the upholstered bed, one hand beneath the curve of my stomach and the other gripping the torn edge of my satin robe. Pain moved through my lower body in crushing waves. Every time I tried to sit upright, the bright bedroom tilted.
Caleb supported my shoulders without lifting me.
His travel bag lay open near the door. Flowers and a paper breakfast bag had spilled across the floor when he saw me.
An unfamiliar dark jacket hung over the chair.
A medical bag rested near the window.
Our wedding portrait had shattered beside my bare foot.
For one terrible second, Caleb looked from the jacket to my uneven nightdress.
Suspicion crossed his face.
His mother had spent years preparing that reaction.
Then another wave of pain took my breath, and fear replaced everything else in his eyes.
He called emergency services.
“My wife is eight months pregnant. Severe pain. She is barely conscious.”
The dispatcher instructed him to keep me still and place a clean towel nearby. Caleb obeyed, speaking with the controlled urgency of a man using action to avoid panic.
I gripped his sleeve.
“Your mother answered for me.”
“What?”
“I called you seventeen times.”
“My phone was off during the flight.”
“I called Lorraine after that.”
His expression changed.
“What did she do?”
The bedroom door moved slightly in the draft.
I stared toward the hallway, terrified that Lorraine was still inside the house.
“She said the hospital told me to wait. She took my phone. She told the doctor I was better.”
Caleb reached beneath the bed and found my phone.
The screen showed the unanswered calls I had made to him. Beneath them was a photograph of Dr. Elias Morgan standing outside our townhouse with his medical bag.
Caleb looked toward the unfamiliar jacket.
“Who does that belong to?”
“The doctor who tried to save us.”
His shame arrived instantly.
He searched the jacket and found Elias’s hospital identification card. The physician had apparently entered the bedroom, removed his coat, and opened his medical bag.
Yet he was nowhere inside the house.
Heavy footsteps sounded downstairs.
The paramedics had arrived.
Before they reached us, the bedroom door opened.
Lorraine Rowan stood in the hallway wearing a cream suit and pearl earrings. My missing coat hung over one arm. A second phone rested in her hand.
Her expression changed when she saw Caleb holding Elias’s identification card.
“There you are,” she said softly. “I came back because Hannah became hysterical.”
Caleb positioned himself between us while keeping one hand against my shoulder.
“Why did she call you?”
“She was confused.”
“Why did you take her phone?”
“I was trying to stop her from frightening everyone.”
A paramedic entered and immediately focused on me.
Questions moved rapidly around the room.
Bleeding.
Pain.
Fetal movement.
Consciousness.
The medic exchanged a serious look with his partner.
“We need to move now.”
They transferred me carefully onto a stretcher.
As they passed the shattered wedding portrait, my fingers caught Caleb’s wrist.
“Under the frame.”
He looked down.
A small memory card rested beneath the broken glass beside an opened prenatal envelope.
I had hidden it there three days earlier after noticing the bedroom security camera no longer connected to our household network.
Caleb picked it up.
Lorraine stepped forward.
“That belongs to the security company.”
“No,” I whispered. “It belongs to me.”
The stretcher moved into the hallway.
Lorraine followed.
“She has been anxious throughout this pregnancy,” she told the paramedics. “Her doctor believes stress causes most of these episodes.”
“That is not my doctor,” I said.
One paramedic looked directly at me.
“We are listening to you.”
Those five words nearly broke me.
Inside the ambulance, my blood pressure dropped. Oxygen covered part of my face while Caleb held my hand.
I watched the townhouse disappear through the rear windows.
Lorraine remained in the driveway.
She raised the second phone and began typing.
At Harbor Regional Medical Center, the obstetric team rushed me behind secure doors. Caleb was left in the corridor wearing a white shirt stained from helping me.
A nurse later brought him my phone inside a clear bag.
The final voice message began with my breathing.
Then Lorraine’s voice entered.
“Hannah, stop performing. Dr. Morgan has already left. Caleb will see exactly what kind of wife he married.”
The message ended with a sound like the phone striking the bedroom floor.
Caleb inserted the memory card into a hospital computer under security supervision.
The first video showed Lorraine entering our bedroom while I was on the floor.
She did not call for emergency help.
She stepped over my hand, picked up my phone, and answered an incoming call from Dr. Morgan.
The audio was damaged, but her lips were visible.
My symptoms have stopped.
Do not come inside.
Then the video showed another person standing behind her.
Only one arm entered the frame.
The person wore a dark medical sleeve and held a syringe case.
Lorraine looked directly toward the camera.
She smiled.
May you like
Then she reached upward and disconnected it.
Continue to the next part: While Hannah undergoes emergency treatment, Caleb discovers that his mother possessed medical authority neither he nor Hannah knowingly gave her.
