Chapter 7 - The Emergency Call
The afternoon sun was swallowed by ominous, purple-black thunderheads rolling in from Lake Michigan.
Sophia sat in her private office at Bennett Design, rubbing her lower back. A dull, rhythmic ache had begun radiating through her pelvis an hour ago, accompanied by a tight, constricting pressure across her abdomen.
She glanced at her watch. She was twenty-two weeks along. *Too early. Far too early.*
She tried to take a deep breath, but a sharp, stabbing cramp ripped through her lower abdomen, forcing a gasp from her lips. Her vision blurred, dark spots dancing across her eyes.
“David!” she called out, her voice strained and thin.
David hurried in from the main studio, holding a set of fabric swatches. The moment he saw her pale face, drenched in cold sweat, he dropped the swatches to the floor. “Sophia! What’s wrong?”
“Call... call an ambulance,” Sophia gasped, gripping the edge of the mahogany drafting table with white knuckles. “Northwestern Memorial. Dr. Elena Morgan... call her now.”
***
At Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Dr. Elena Morgan was in the middle of a prenatal consultation when her emergency direct-line phone shrieked.
She answered immediately. “Dr. Morgan.”
“Elena! It’s Maya Collins!” The attorney’s usually composed voice was laced with sheer panic. “Sophia is in an ambulance on the way to your emergency bay. Severe abdominal pain and bleeding. She’s twenty-two weeks!”
Elena’s heart plummeted into her stomach. “I’m heading down to trauma bay four right now. Keep her calm!”
Elena tore off her lab coat, replaced it with sterile surgical scrubs, and sprinted down the emergency stairwell, barking orders to the triage nurses on her headset: “Prep an ultrasound, IV magnesium sulfate, and call the neonatal intensive care team on standby! We have a potential extreme preterm labor!”
As the automatic doors of the ambulance bay flew open, paramedics wheeled the gurney into the trauma room. Sophia was shivering uncontrollably, her face as white as paper, her hands clutching her belly.
“Elena...” Sophia whispered, her lips blue. “Please... don't let anything happen to my baby... please...”
“I’ve got you, Soph,” Elena said, her voice fiercely steady despite the terror clawing at her throat. “You’re in my hands now. Look at me. Breathe. Just breathe.”
Elena applied the ultrasound probe to Sophia’s abdomen. The screen flickered to life. The amniotic fluid was dangerously low, and the cervix was beginning to shorten under the strain of acute placental abruption—likely triggered by severe emotional stress and skyrocketing blood pressure.
“BP is 185 over 110!” a nurse called out. “She’s slipping into pre-eclampsia!”
“Push labetalol immediately!” Elena ordered. “Start the fetal monitor!”
Outside the trauma room, the heavy double doors were suddenly thrown open with such violent force that they bounced off the wall bumpers with a deafening crash.
Luke stood there.
He was drenched in rain, having abandoned his car in the middle of hospital traffic and sprinted two blocks on foot. His shirt was torn at the collar, his eyes wild with a primal, agonizing terror that made the emergency room staff freeze in place.
“Sophia!” he roared, lunging toward the glass partition.
Two hospital security guards moved to block him, but Luke shoved them aside with a single, furious sweep of his arms. “Get your hands off me!”
“Luke, stop!” Elena stepped out of the trauma bay, blocking his path, her scrubs splattered with saline and medication drops. “You cannot go in there!”
Luke grabbed his sister’s shoulders, his fingers digging into her fabric, his entire six-foot-three frame trembling uncontrollably. Tears were streaming freely down his face, mixing with the rain on his cheeks.
“Is she alive?” he sobbed, the sound breaking from his chest like a dying animal’s howl. “Elena, tell me! Is she alive? Is our baby alive?”
Elena gripped his forearms, feeling the violent tremors racking his body. For the first time in her entire life, she saw her brother—the invincible, terrifying Luke Morgan—completely broken. The armor was gone. The boss was dead. All that remained was a man watching the only thing that gave his life meaning slip into the grave.
“She’s alive, Luke,” Elena said, her own voice cracking with tears. “She has acute placental abruption. If we can't stabilize her blood pressure and stop the contractions in the next thirty minutes... we’ll lose them both.”
Luke fell to his knees on the sterile linoleum floor.
He didn't care about the nurses staring. He didn't care about the security guards standing by. He buried his face in his hands, his broad back heaving with silent, racking sobs.
May you like
“Take me,” Luke whispered into the cold hospital air, bargaining with a God he hadn't spoken to in twenty years. “Take my money. Take my life. Burn my empire to the ground. Just save my wife. Save my child.”
***
