Chapter 2 - The Ghost in OR Two
The pneumatic doors of County General hissed open with the force of an explosion. Fluorescent light knifed across my retina, searing through the dark fog that pulled at my consciousness.
"Trauma One, clear the hallway! We’ve got a twenty-eight-year-old female, strangulation, severe tracheal collapse, secondary cardiac arrest en route!" The paramedic’s voice vibrated through the metal frame of the gurney. "Gestational age thirty-four weeks! Fetal distress—heart rate bottoming out at sixty!"
Hands tore at my clothes. Cold trauma shears bit through the cashmere sweater Daniel had bought me for our third anniversary. The fabric split down the middle, exposing my swollen belly to the freezing air of the operating room.
I couldn't scream. My vocal cords were mangled meat. Every breath felt like inhaling broken glass, but deep inside the prison of my paralyzed body, every synapse was screaming for my child. *Not him. Take me, but let my baby breathe.*
"Get the crash cart! Prep the abdomen with Betadine! Where is the on-call OB?"
"Doctor Evans is scrubbing in! Scalpel to hand—now!"
A mask slammed onto my mouth and nose. "Claire, can you hear me? Stay with us, Claire!"
Through the blurry halogen glare above, a face appeared. Detective Marcus Miller. He had been a close friend of my father’s for twenty years, the man who used to bring me salt water taffy when I was a little girl running around the precinct. His face was gray, his jaw locked in horror as his eyes flickered from the purple, finger-shaped bruises ringing my throat to the bloody lacerations on my shoulder where Daniel had held me down.
"Marcus..." I tried to push the sound through my teeth, but only a wet, bubbling rattle escaped.
Marcus leaned down, his voice trembling near my ear. "Claire. Don't speak. Listen to me. Daniel called 911 from his car four minutes ago. He staged an alibi. He told dispatch he came home, found the front door kicked in, and found you unresponsive. He thinks you're dead, Claire."
My heart monitor spiked, a frantic staccato of beeps.
Marcus gripped my trembling, cold hand. His eyes turned into flint. "If he knows you're breathing, he will finish the job. If the media catches wind that you survived, he runs, or he finds a way into this ICU. Do you hear me? For you, and for this baby... Claire Hayes has to die tonight."
A sharp, searing line of agony ripped across my lower abdomen. The scalpel. There had been no time for an epidural, no time for full general anesthesia. My body arched against the restraints, my fingernails digging into Marcus's forearm until blood welled beneath my grip.
"Suction! Clamp! Hand me the retractor!"
Darkness roared at the edges of my vision. The pain was an ocean, swallowing me whole. And then, cutting through the blare of monitors and the metallic clatter of surgical steel, came a sound that shattered the nightmare.
A thin, fragile, furious wail.
"We have a boy," the surgeon breathed, holding up a tiny, mottled body covered in fluid. "Vigorous cry. APGAR is seven. Neonatal team, take him!"
Tears spilled over my temples, burning the cuts on my face. My son was alive.
"She’s arresting again! Ventricular fibrillation!"
"Pads! Charge to two hundred!"
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The last thing I saw before the blackness dragged me under was Marcus pulling a white sheet over the top of the stainless-steel tray, his voice low and steady into his police radio: "Dispatch, notify the coroner. The victim in the Elm Street homicide did not survive."
***
