The chaos of the emergency room, the shouting of surgeons, the suffocating press of an oxygen mask—it all blurred into a terrifying, dark void.
When I finally fought my way back to consciousness, three days had evaporated.
I woke up in the Intensive Care Unit. The first thing I registered was the rhythmic, hollow *beep* of the heart monitor. My mouth tasted like dry cotton and pennies. Every muscle in my body felt as though it had been beaten with hammers, and a fiery, deep-seated ache radiated from my lower abdomen. The sterile smell of iodine and floor wax was nauseating. I blinked against the harsh fluorescent lights, my vision slowly swimming into focus to find Mark sitting vigilantly beside my bed.
He looked like a man who had been through a war. His designer shirt was wrinkled, his hair disheveled, and dark, bruised bags hung heavy beneath his bloodshot eyes. The second he saw my eyelids flutter, he choked back a sob and practically fell over my bed, his hands frantically grasping my trembling fingers.
“Hailey… oh, God, Hailey, you’re awake,” he breathed, his voice rough and broken.
I tried to speak, but my throat was a desert. I panicked, my hands instinctively flying to my flat stomach. The monitors around me began to blare with my rising heart rate. Where were they? Where were my boys?
Mark’s grip tightened, his knuckles turning white. He leaned in, his face inches from mine, and delivered the words that shattered my universe.
“They couldn’t save one of the babies,” he whispered, squeezing my hand with tears in his eyes.
