Chapter 6 - The Midnight Ambush
Rain lashed against the windows of Carolinas Medical Center as the autumn storm broke over Charlotte with violent fury. Thunder rattled the heavy glass panes of the labor and delivery suite on the fourth floor.
"Contractions are two minutes apart, Claire," Dr. Vance said calmly, checking the digital telemetry monitors beside the bed. "Your blood pressure is one-sixty over one-ten. The preeclampsia has escalated. We can't wait for a natural delivery. The fetal monitor is showing late decelerations—Maya is under distress. We are taking you into the OR for an emergency C-section right now."
"Is she going to be okay?" I pleaded, sweating, trembling as another contraction crested like a tidal wave across my spine.
"She is going to be fine," Dr. Vance said with fierce certainty, squeezing my hand tightly. "I delivered thousands of babies, Claire, and I am not letting anything happen to this little girl. Let’s move!"
Nurses and surgical techs unlocked the wheels of the bed, maneuvering me out of the delivery suite and into the sterile white corridor leading toward the operating rooms. Marian walked beside me, her silver hair unruffled, her hand locked in mine.
Suddenly, the red emergency lights along the ceiling began flashing. A harsh, automated alarm sounded over the intercom: *Code Silver, West Wing. Security breach. Code Silver, West Wing.*
Down the far end of the corridor, past the nurses' station, heavy double doors burst open with a resounding crash.
"Claire!"
Preston stood in the hallway. He was drenched in rainwater, his clothes filthy, his jacket torn at the shoulder. In his right hand, he clutched a heavy steel tire iron he had ripped from the groundskeeper's truck. His face was gaunt, his eyes hollow and burning with the deranged mania of a cornered animal who had lost everything and blamed the entire world for his slaughter.
Two hospital security guards charged toward him, reaching for their tasers.
Preston swung the tire iron with frantic, adrenaline-fueled madness, striking the first guard across the shoulder, sending him crashing into a medication cart with a deafening rattle of plastic vials and metal trays.
"Get away from her!" Preston screamed, charging down the hallway toward my gurney. Nurses screamed, scattering into patient rooms, slamming heavy fire doors shut. "She is my wife! That is my baby! You don't get to take them from me! You don't get to steal my life!"
Dr. Vance and two male orderlies immediately positioned themselves in front of my bed, shielding me with their bodies.
"Preston, stop!" I yelled through the agony of another contraction, trying to push myself upright. "Look at yourself! You’ve lost your mind!"
Preston stopped ten feet away, panting heavily, rain and sweat dripping from his chin onto the linoleum floor. The tire iron hung at his side, trembling.
"I built it, Claire," he sobbed, his voice cracking between rage and pathetic grief. "I built Hawthorne Enterprises! I gave you that house! I gave you those diamonds! And you teamed up with that old witch to strip me naked in front of the whole world! You turned Cassidy against me! You took my name off the building!"
"You did this to yourself, Preston!" I cried, tears mixing with sweat on my face. "You threw coffee on your pregnant wife! You stole my mother's anniversary bracelet to put on your mistress! You stole money from your own employees! You are a thief, a liar, and a coward!"
"I loved you!" he screamed, lifting the tire iron, stepping forward with murder in his eyes. "If I can't have my family, nobody can—"
*BANG.*
A sharp, deafening crack echoed through the corridor.
Preston froze. A look of total shock spread across his face.
A high-voltage taser dart had struck him directly in the center of his chest. The copper wires hummed as fifty thousand volts of electricity surged through his nervous system.
Preston’s muscles locked instantly. The tire iron dropped from his fingers, clattering loudly against the floor. His eyes rolled back into his head, and he collapsed forward onto the wet linoleum like a felled tree.
Standing behind him, lowering his department-issued taser, was Arthur Vance’s head of private security, flanked by four armed Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officers with their service weapons drawn.
"Suspect is down," the officer shouted, moving in swiftly, dropping a knee into Preston’s back, wrenching his arms behind him, and clicking heavy steel handcuffs around his wrists.
Preston groaned into the floor, twitching as the residual voltage left his body, spitting blood onto the tile.
"Get her into the OR! Now!" Dr. Vance ordered, never breaking stride.
May you like
The gurney surged forward, rolling past the crumpled, disgraced form of my husband. As the heavy doors of the surgical suite swung open, sealing out the madness of the world behind bright, sterile lights, I closed my eyes and focused entirely on the steady, stubborn beat of the tiny heart inside me.
***
