Chapter 2: The Emergency Birth
Chapter 2: The Emergency Birth
Two weeks earlier, Audrey had gone into labor at twenty-nine weeks.
She had been alone when the pain started.
Daniel was supposed to be at a late meeting.
That was what he said.
His phone went straight to voicemail.
Audrey called three times.
Then five.
Then she called 911 herself.
By the time the ambulance arrived, she was already bleeding.
At the hospital, everything moved too fast.
Nurses.
Lights.
Consent forms.
A doctor saying, “We need to deliver now.”
Audrey remembered grabbing a nurse’s sleeve.
“My husband,” she gasped. “Please call my husband.”
The nurse did.
Daniel did not answer.
The twins came by emergency C-section.
A boy first.
Then a girl.
Both too small.
Both fighting.
Audrey woke up hours later in a recovery room with an empty belly and a terror so deep she could barely breathe.
The nurse told her the babies were in the NICU.
Stable.
Critical, but stable.
Daniel arrived the next morning.
Not panicked.
Not breathless.
Annoyed.
His first words were not, “Are you okay?”
They were, “Why didn’t you wait?”
Audrey stared at him, still half-dazed from medication.
“Wait?”
“I had investors in town.”
She thought the pain meds were making her hear wrong.
“Our babies were born early.”
Daniel looked through the glass toward the NICU.
“They don’t even look real.”
Something inside Audrey folded in on itself.
She told herself he was scared.
Men said cruel things when they were scared.
That was what she wanted to believe.
Then Rachel appeared three days later.
Audrey saw her through the NICU window first.
Blonde hair.
Soft coat.
One hand resting on a pregnant stomach.
Daniel stood beside her.
Too close.
Too familiar.
Rachel looked at the incubators and said something Audrey could not hear.
Daniel laughed.
Audrey pressed one hand against her incision and stood, slowly, painfully.
When Daniel came into the room, she asked him who Rachel was.
He didn’t even bother to lie well.
“She’s someone important to me.”
Audrey’s mouth went dry.
“I’m your wife.”
May you like
“You’re a problem I should have solved months ago.”
👉 And when Daniel placed divorce papers beside her hospital chair, Audrey realized the betrayal had started long before the twins were born.
