Chapter 11 - The Nurse with the Cold Hands
The shock of the revelation didn't have time to settle.
A sharp, violent cramp ripped through my lower abdomen, doubling me over so fast I hit the floor on all fours before Julian could catch me.
"Clara!"
"The baby," I gasped, clutching my stomach. A hot, terrifying wetness soaked through my leggings. "Julian... the baby’s coming. Now."
The stress, the physical trauma of the fall, the smoke from the fire—it had finally broken through my body’s defenses. I was thirty-four weeks pregnant, bleeding on the cold linoleum of the courthouse basement.
The next hour was a blur of red sirens, flashing lights, and shouting EMTs.
"Placental abruption suspected!" the paramedic yelled into his radio as the ambulance tore through Boston traffic toward Tufts Medical Center. "Maternal blood pressure dropping! 85 over 50! Fetal heart rate decelerating to 90!"
"Stay with me, Clara!" Julian was beside the stretcher, his hand crushing mine. "Look at me! Don't you close your eyes!"
"Julian..." Darkness was creeping in at the edges of my vision, thick and heavy. "Don't let them take him... don't let Evelyn..."
"Nobody is taking him. I swear to you on my life."
The ambulance bay doors flew open. I was wheeled into the bright, freezing glare of Trauma Room 3. Doctors, surgical masks, the hiss of oxygen.
"Prepare for emergency C-section!" an obstetrician barked. "Get her under now!"
An anesthesia mask was shoved over my face. The sweet, chemical smell pulled me down into the deep, dark ocean.
* * *
When I opened my eyes, the world was dim and quiet.
The agonizing weight in my belly was gone. In its place was a dull, throbbing numbness across my pelvis. The room was dark, lit only by the green pulse of an IV monitor.
"Julian?" I rasped.
No answer. The plastic armchair beside my bed was empty. Julian’s coat was draped over the back, but he was gone.
A soft clink of glass sounded from the shadow near the IV pole.
A woman was standing there in a light blue nurse's uniform, her back turned to me. She was adjusting the plastic drip chamber on my intravenous line, holding a small syringe with clear fluid.
"Where is my husband?" I whispered. "Where’s my baby?"
The nurse turned around.
She had cold, pale gray eyes, a tight bun of blonde hair, and a face I had seen once before—in the framed photographs on Evelyn Vance’s mantle.
It was Evelyn’s personal private-duty nurse, Brenda Walsh. The woman who had cared for Arthur Vance in his final days at the mansion.
"Hush now, Clara," Brenda whispered, sliding the needle of the syringe into the rubber injection port of my IV tube. "Your baby is in the NICU. He's very small. Very fragile. It would be such a shame if his mother didn't survive to hold him."
"Get away from me!" I tried to yank my arm away, but my muscles were water, paralyzed by the residual anesthesia.
Brenda’s fingers clamped around my forearm like steel pliers. Her thumb began to depress the plunger of the syringe.
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"Evelyn sends her regards," Brenda smiled. "She said to tell you: the bloodline ends tonight."
***
