Then louder, breaking. “No. No. No. No.”
My hands shake so badly I nearly collapse again. I press my thighs together instinctively, like pressure might stop it, like my body might listen if I beg hard enough.
Tears spill freely now.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. To Seth. To our baby who never had time to exist.
I try to walk.
Each step is slow and careful, hopeful in the most pathetic way. Like if I move gently, the universe might change its mind. Blood slides down my inner thighs as another cramp slams through me, stealing my vision entirely.
I make it two steps.
Then three.
The room tilts sharply. My ears fill with static. My legs give out beneath me.
I don’t feel the impact. There is only the sudden absence of ground, the sickening disconnect as my body lets go.
Darkness closes in fast.
“Brooke,” Miles’s voice cuts through the haze, sharp with panic. “Brooke, stay with me. Please.”
Then everything goes black.
I wake up on the cot again.
Breathing still hurts. Each inhale catches shallow in my chest, like my lungs never fully recovered from what they were forced through. My head feels heavy, stuffed with cotton and echoing sounds that arrive a beat too late. My body feels emptied out, hollowed down to something fragile and exposed.
The physician stands beside me. I don’t look at him. I keep my eyes fixed on the ceiling, tracing cracks in the concrete.
The question slips out anyway. “Did I lose it?”
He glances at the chart.
“Yes.”
The word lands, sinking deep into my chest and staying there. I stare upward, waiting for something else to follow. An explanation that changes the meaning. A silence that suggests uncertainty.
Nothing comes.
“The amount of bleeding you experienced,” he continues, “combined with oxygen deprivation and physical trauma, made the outcome unavoidable.”
I swallow hard.
“Oh,” I whisper.
It is the only sound my body seems capable of forming.
The physician turns away, already finished, already moving on to whatever comes next.
I lie there staring at the ceiling, lungs aching, chest caving inward, knowing something has been taken from me that I will never get back.
Chapter 25
Seth
We take him to an abandoned storage yard twenty minutes out. Corrugated metal units sit rusted and half collapsed while weeds push through the cracked concrete. The place has no cameras and no neighbors.
