Vaughn’s POV
The dial tone echoed in the freezing car like a death knell.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
"Hello? Hello!" I screamed into the shattered screen of my phone.
Nothing. The line was dead. The dispatcher had hung up on me.
A violent gust of wind howled through the shattered windshield, bringing with it a spray of ice and snow. The freezing temperature bit into my skin instantly.
"Vaughn..." a weak, wet voice gasped beside me.
I snapped my head to the right. Jade was slumped against the ruined dashboard. Her face was deathly pale.
A massive shard of glass was embedded in her thigh, and dark, warm blood was pulsing out, pooling rapidly on the ruined leather seat.
Panic, raw and suffocating, gripped my throat.
"Hold on, Jade. I'm here. I'm going to fix this," I choked out, my hands trembling violently.
I ripped my designer tie from my neck. My fingers were slick with my own blood from the gash on my stomach, making it nearly impossible to grip. I fumbled with my leather belt, yanking it free from my trousers.
"Stay awake, Jade! Look at me!" I shouted, leaning over the console.
I wrapped the belt tightly around her upper thigh, pulling it as hard as I could to cut off the arterial flow. Jade let out a blood-curdling scream, her head rolling back.
"It hurts! Vaughn, it hurts so much!" she sobbed, her voice growing fainter.
"I know, baby, I know. Just hold on."
I tied the silk tie around her other laceration, my breath coming in ragged, white clouds in the freezing air.
The cold was absolute. It seeped into my bones, numbing my fingers, freezing the blood on my clothes.
I looked around the crushed interior of the Bentley. The dashboard had caved in, pinning my legs. The metal was twisted, the glass shattered.
The absolute, suffocating darkness of the blizzard surrounded us.
And then, it hit me.
A horrifying, paralyzing realization struck my chest like a physical blow.
This is exactly how Carmela died.
Trapped in the freezing dark. Pinned by crushed metal. Bleeding out.
My mind flashed back to the sixty missed calls on my phone.
Sixty times she had reached out to me from the wreckage of her parents' car, begging for her life, begging for our baby's life.
And I had declined every single one.
I had left her to freeze. I had left her to bleed.
A wave of nausea washed over me. The sheer, terrifying helplessness of this moment—the cold, the pain, the absolute desperation—was exactly what I had forced my wife to endure.
"Help!" I screamed, my voice tearing my throat.
I smashed my bloody fists against the remaining glass of the window, trying to break it away. Through the blinding whiteout, I saw the faint, blurry headlights of a passing car on the other side of the highway.
"Hey! Stop! Please!" I roared, waving my arms frantically through the broken window.
The car didn't even slow down. It vanished into the snow.
"Please..." I sobbed, the arrogant pride of President Vaughn completely shattered. "Somebody help us."
It felt like hours before the flashing red and blue lights finally pierced the blizzard.
It wasn't my elite trauma team. It wasn't the medevac chopper. It was a standard, beat-up county ambulance.
The paramedics pried the doors open with the jaws of life. The agony of my crushed legs being freed was blinding, but I didn't care.
"Take her first! She's pregnant!" I yelled as they pulled me onto a stretcher.
The ride to the hospital was a nightmare. Every bump in the road sent jolts of pain through my spine.
When the ambulance finally screeched to a halt, they wheeled us into the chaotic, overcrowded emergency room of St. Jude’s—a rundown, underfunded public hospital on the edge of the city.
The fluorescent lights flickered. The floors were scuffed. The smell of bleach and cheap coffee filled the air.
"We need a trauma surgeon immediately!" I barked, trying to sit up on my gurney as they wheeled Jade past me. "I am Dr. Vaughn! Chief of Medicine at Greenville General! I need to scrub in!"
A tired-looking ER doctor in a stained coat pushed me back down firmly.
"You aren't scrubbing in anywhere, buddy. You're a patient," the doctor snapped.
"You don't understand! She's my fiancée! She's carrying my child!" I screamed, fighting against the nurses holding me down. "Her blood pressure is dropping! Push epinephrine and get her to the OR now!"
"Back off, sir! Let us do our jobs!" a nurse yelled, completely ignoring my authority.
They wheeled Jade through the swinging double doors of the surgical wing. The doors slammed shut, leaving me stranded in the hallway.
I lay there for what felt like an eternity. A resident eventually came and stitched up my stomach, wrapping my bruised legs.
But my eyes never left those surgical doors.
I prayed. For the first time in my life, I actually prayed. I promised whatever god was listening that if Jade and the baby survived, I would be a better man. I would make up for everything.
Suddenly, the surgical doors flew open.
A surgical nurse rushed out, her scrubs splattered with blood. She looked frantic, her eyes scanning the hallway until they landed on me.
"Are you the fiancé? The father?" she demanded, rushing to my side with a clipboard.
"Yes! Yes, that's me. Is she okay? Is the baby okay?" I asked, my heart hammering against my ribs.
"The mother is stabilizing, but the fetus is in severe distress. There was massive internal trauma," the nurse said quickly, clicking her pen.
"The baby is losing too much blood. We need to do an emergency fetal blood transfusion right now, or the child will die. I need your consent."
"Do it! Do whatever it takes!" I yelled. "Take my blood! I'll donate right now. Take as much as you need!"
The nurse nodded, flipping to the second page of her chart to check my intake labs.
"Okay, let me just check your type to see if you're a match..."
Her finger traced down the page.
Suddenly, she stopped.
Her frantic energy vanished, replaced by a deep, confused frown. She looked at the paper, then looked up at me.
"Sir," she said, her voice dropping to a cautious whisper. "Your intake labs say your blood type is O-negative."
"Yes. Universal donor. Take it," I urged, rolling up my sleeve.
The nurse didn't move. She just stared at me, her expression turning into a mix of pity and suspicion.
"Sir... the fetal blood type is AB-positive."
The noisy, chaotic emergency room seemed to instantly go dead silent. The ringing in my ears returned.
"What?" I breathed.
"An O-negative father cannot produce an AB-positive child," the nurse stated flatly, her eyes locked onto mine. "It is genetically impossible."
She lowered the clipboard.
"Sir... are you sure you're the father?"
