Chapter 3 - Code Crimson in Room 402
The ambulance ride was a nightmare painted in the harsh strobe of red lights and the frantic beeping of cardiac monitors.
Clara was fading fast. The hypothermia from the pool water, combined with the severe blunt trauma to her chest and the internal shock to her reproductive system, was sending her body into deep cardiovascular collapse. Her lips were turning blue, and her breathing sounded like paper tearing in the wind.
"Julian..." she mumbled, her eyes rolling toward the roof of the ambulance. "It hurts... my stomach hurts so much..."
"Look at me, Clara! Stay with me!" Julian pleaded, leaning over her, his face inches from hers. He was shivering violently himself from his soaked suit, but he didn't feel the cold. All he felt was the terrifying sensation that the two pillars of his existence were crumbling beneath his feet. "Think about our nursery. The walls we painted pale blue last weekend. The wooden crib we built together. You promised me we’d take him to Lake Michigan next summer. You can't break that promise!"
"Trauma Bay 4, we are three minutes out!" the paramedic shouted into the radio overhead. "Uterine rigidity noted! We suspect placental abruption secondary to physical impact!"
*Placental abruption.*
Julian knew what that meant. The placenta had torn away from the uterine wall. The baby was being suffocated inside the womb, cut off from oxygen and blood, while Clara was bleeding internally to death.
The ambulance screeched to a halt at the Northwestern Memorial Hospital trauma bay. The rear doors flew open, and a wall of sterile, blinding white light flooded in. Six doctors and nurses in blue surgical scrubs swarmed the vehicle like a coordinated military unit.
"Twenty-six-year-old female, trauma, third trimester!"
"BP is crashing, 70 over 40!"
"No detectable fetal heart rate on Doppler!"
"Move! Room 402, right now! Prep an arterial line and call Dr. Sterling down from Labor and Delivery!"
The gurney was pushed through the double swinging doors at a dead run. Julian sprinted behind them, his shoes squeaking violently against the polished linoleum floors. Nurses shouted at him to stay in the waiting area, but he shoved past them with terrifying strength, his eyes wild.
"I am her husband! I am Julian Vance! If any of you touch me, I will buy this hospital and burn it to the ground! Let me through!"
He burst into Trauma Room 402 just as they transferred Clara’s limp body onto the metal operating table. The room was freezing, smelling of iodine and cold stainless steel. A team of nurses immediately cut away Clara’s ruined blush-pink dress with heavy trauma shears, exposing her pale, swollen belly. A massive, purple-black bruise was already blooming across her sternum and the upper crest of her stomach—the clear, unmistakable imprint of a woman's pointed shoe.
Julian saw it. The sight knocked the air from his lungs. It wasn't a scrape. It wasn't a bruise from falling against the edge of a pool. It was an intentional, concentrated stomp.
*Victoria.*
Suddenly, an alarm on the overhead monitor shrieked a flat, continuous tone.
"She's coding!" a nurse yelled. "Ventricular fibrillation! Clara has gone into cardiac arrest!"
"Start chest compressions! Charge the paddles to one hundred!" an emergency physician barked, leaping onto a stool beside the bed and locking his elbows, violently pumping Clara’s chest.
"No! Stop! Clara!" Julian screamed, lunging toward the bed, but two massive security guards and an orderly grabbed him from behind, tackling him against the tiled wall.
"Sir, you have to let us work! She is dying!" the lead doctor shouted over the screaming alarms. "Get him out of here! Now!"
"Clara! Clara, fight!" Julian roared, kicking and thrashing against the guards. "Don't leave me! Fight for our boy!"
The heavy double doors of Trauma Room 402 slammed shut in Julian's face as the guards hauled him out into the cold, empty corridor.
Julian fell to his knees on the linoleum floor. The puddles of pool water dripping from his soaked suit spread out around him like spilled ink. He buried his face in his trembling hands, dry sobs tearing through his throat. The terrifying sound of the flatline alarm continued to echo faintly through the soundproof glass doors.
Footsteps echoed down the hallway. Slow. Measured. Rhythmic.
Julian looked up through red, swollen eyes.
Walking down the sterile corridor, carrying an expensive Italian leather handbag and wearing a dry black trench coat draped over her shoulders, was Victoria Vance. She looked immaculate. Behind her walked Harold Vance, Julian’s weak-willed father, looking pale and nervous, clutching a handkerchief.
Victoria stopped three feet from Julian. She looked down at her only son kneeling in a puddle of dirty water, her face showing nothing but cold disdain.
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"Get up off the floor, Julian," she said softly, her voice echoing in the dead hall. "You are embarrassing the family name. Look at you. Crying like a child over a girl who was never worthy to bear the Vance bloodline."
***
