The day I was due, my husband ordered the nurses to inject me with labor-delaying drugs for the third time.
Drenched in sweat, I begged him.
"Please, we can't wait any longer. The doctor said if we keep delaying, the baby's life will be in danger..."
Antony Gilbert's tone was ice-cold.
"I promised Betty that she would be the one to give me my firstborn."
"Only the eldest son of the Gilbert family is entitled to inherit the family's assets. Your child was conceived in wedlock. I'll take care of him his whole life."
"It's just a two-hour delay. He can handle that much."
Two hours later, my unborn child suffocated to death inside my womb.
Meanwhile, Antony was cradling the son Betty Henson had just delivered, the three of them together like a perfect little family.
When he learned my baby was gone, all he did was furrow his brow slightly. His voice softened a fraction.
"Take care of yourself. You can always have another one."
He held out a check.
"Ten million dollars. Consider it compensation."
I didn't move. I didn't take it.
What he didn't know was that there wouldn't be another one.
The child Antony had killed with his own hands was the only one he would ever have.
……
Seeing me motionless, still staring blankly out the window, Antony sighed and placed the check on the nightstand beside the hospital bed.
"Think it over."
"It's just a child. But I promise you, you're still Mrs. Gilbert."
I still said nothing.
Antony turned to leave. "If you don't want to talk, then get some rest."
I knew where he was going. The room next door.
To see the woman he'd always loved. Betty Henson. The one who'd just given birth.
We'd both just been through labor. My face was white as a corpse. Hers carried a delicate flush beneath her porcelain skin.
"Antony, come look at our son."
In that moment, Betty's gaze drifted toward me, triumphant and taunting. Her eyes said it all.
Lauren Fisher, you lost.
I tried to twist my lips into a bitter smile but found I didn't even have the strength for that.
It wasn't until something warm soaked through the sheets that I slowly looked down. A spreading pool of red.
"Nurse..."
My voice was barely a whisper.
Then I heard a nurse's panicked scream. "Doctor! Get in here! She's hemorrhaging!"
Maybe it was the drugs still working through my system.
My consciousness grew heavier and heavier.
Through the chaos of shouting voices, I felt myself being wheeled back into the emergency room.
"Mrs. Gilbert, stay with us! You can't fall asleep!"
But my eyelids were so heavy.
I drifted off into a haze and fell into a dream.
A nightmare.
I dreamed of the day of the delivery. Antony ordering the nurses to inject me again and again with labor-delaying drugs.
I lay collapsed on the delivery table, every ounce of strength wrung from my body, cold sweat soaking through the pad beneath me.
Hair plastered to my ashen face.
Every contraction felt like a dull blade twisting through my organs.
The nurse's face crumpled with guilt as she pleaded.
"Mr. Gilbert, we really can't give her any more."
"The dosage is already past the limit. If we keep going, it will cause serious harm to both the mother and the baby..."
The doctor administering the injection had gone pale too. He took a deep breath and turned to Antony.
"Mr. Gilbert, she's fully dilated. The fetal heart rate is dropping. If we inject another dose, the baby will suffocate. These are two lives we're talking about!"
Antony stood in the doorway of the delivery room, his thin lips pressed into a hard line. Three quiet words fell from his mouth.
"Keep going."
I used every last shred of strength to grab hold of him, desperate, pleading.
