CHAPTER 1 — The Final Heartbeat
Mark closed his gloved hand around my wedding ring.
For one second, he remained frozen beside me, staring at the simple platinum band as though it weighed more than the damaged elevator hanging above us.
Then his training took over.
“We need a medical team in here!” he shouted.
Two firefighters pushed through the narrow opening. One placed an oxygen mask over my face while another checked my pulse.
Their voices sounded distant.
The ceiling lights blurred.
Beyond them, I could still see Alex standing near the ambulance bay with Valerie in his arms.
She was conscious now.
Her head rested against his chest, but her eyes were open.
Watching me.
Alex finally turned when Mark walked toward him.
“Lieutenant Davis?”
Alex looked irritated, as though the rookie had interrupted something important.
Mark held out his hand.
My wedding ring sat in the center of his black glove.
Alex stopped breathing.
“What is that?”
“Your wife gave it to me.”
Behind the oxygen mask, I watched Alex’s face change.
First confusion.
Then recognition.
Then fear.
He lowered Valerie onto a stretcher and stepped toward Mark.
“What did she say?”
Mark looked directly at him.
“She said she and her daughter wouldn’t be waiting for you anymore.”
Alex’s head snapped toward the elevator.
For the first time since the doors had opened, he truly saw me.
Not as another trapped passenger.
Not as the wife who would forgive him later.
He saw the paramedics lifting me onto a backboard.
He saw my pale face.
He saw my hands still pressed over our daughter.
“Lucy!”
He tried to reach me.
Mark stepped into his path.
“Stay back.”
“That’s my wife!”
Mark’s jaw tightened.
“Then you should have remembered that when you walked past her.”
The paramedics rushed me toward the ambulance.
Alex followed, shouting my name, but the doors closed before he reached us.
Inside, a monitor was strapped across my stomach.
A weak rhythm filled the ambulance.
Fast.
Uneven.
Then suddenly slower.
The paramedic beside me looked toward her partner.
Neither of them spoke.
They did not have to.
I knew that expression.
I had worn it countless times when I worked in the emergency room.
“Tell me,” I whispered.
The paramedic squeezed my hand.
“We’re almost at the hospital.”
“Tell me about my baby.”
Her eyes dropped toward the monitor.
The rhythm slowed again.
And this time, the silence between each beat lasted far too long.
When the ambulance doors opened at the hospital, a doctor was already waiting.
He looked at the monitor once.
May you like
Then he shouted the words that erased everything around me.
“Prepare the operating room. We have to deliver the baby now.”
