Chapter 3 - The Awakening in White
The sterile smell of antiseptic and the rhythmic beep-beep-beep of a heart monitor dragged me back from the dark abyss.
When my eyelids finally fluttered open, the harsh fluorescent lights of a hospital room burned my retinas. My mouth felt like sandpaper, and my left arm ached where an IV line pumped warm fluids directly into my veins.
"She's waking up."
The soft, trembling voice came from the chair beside my bed.
I turned my head slowly, feeling as though my neck were made of lead. Eleanor sat in the uncomfortable plastic armchair, looking older, paler, and thoroughly shattered. Her designer blouse was gone, replaced by a simple gray cardigan, and dark circles bruised the skin beneath her eyes.
"Emily?" she whispered, standing up and rushing to the bedside. She didn't try to touch me right away, as if she were afraid I would shatter at the slightest contact. "Can you hear me, sweetheart?"
"Water..." I rasped out.
Eleanor instantly grabbed a sponge from a cup of ice water on the bedside table and gently moistened my dry, cracked lips. I swallowed the tiny drops greedily, feeling a tiny spark of life return to my throat.
"Where... where is Noah?" I asked, panic instantly seizing my chest as I tried to sit up.
"Shh, shh, lie back down," Eleanor soothed gently, pressing her hand softly against my shoulder. "Noah is completely fine. The pediatric nurses took him to the nursery for a feeding while you were resting. He's healthy, strong, and crying just as loudly as any newborn boy."
A massive wave of relief crashed over me, and fresh tears leaked from the corners of my eyes. "Thank God."
Eleanor watched me cry, her own lower lip trembling. When she spoke next, her voice was thick with shame and a heavy, suffocating guilt.
"The doctors said... they said if the ambulance had arrived ten minutes later, you wouldn't have made it, Emily. You lost over half your blood volume. You suffered a severe postpartum hemorrhage that required emergency surgery and multiple transfusions."
She paused, her hands wringing nervously in her lap.
"When I arrived at the house... I saw the nursery. I saw what Derek left behind."
My breath hitched. "Did you call him?"
Eleanor's expression darkened into a mask of pure, murderous fury.
"I tried," she said, her voice dropping to a low, venomous hiss. "I called his cell phone twenty times. It went straight to voicemail because he had it on airplane mode, exactly like the coward he is. So, I called his friends. I tracked down the luxury cabin in the mountains where he and his buddies were currently drinking whiskey in a hot tub."
She reached down, picked up her leather handbag from the floor, and pulled out a thick manila folder. She placed it gently across my lap.
"When I reached him on his friend's phone," Eleanor continued, her eyes flashing with ice, "he laughed at me. He told me I was enabling your 'hysteria' and that I should stop ruining his birthday weekend."
I stared down at the manila folder, my heart pounding against my ribs.
"What is this?" I asked quietly.
"That," Eleanor said, her voice steady and resolute, "is the beginning of the end for my son. I drove straight back to your house after leaving the hospital. I walked into that nursery, Emily. I looked at the blood soaked into that expensive cream carpet—the very rug I bought you as a housewarming gift. And I realized something disgusting."
May you like
She leaned in close, taking my hand in both of hers.
"My son is a monster. He walked past his wife bleeding to death on a nursery floor to go drink beer in the mountains. He looked at a dying mother and called her dramatic." Eleanor swallowed hard, a tear tracing down her cheek. "I raised him better than that. But clearly, I failed. And now, I am going to make sure he pays for every single drop of blood on that floor."
