Chapter 4 - Sacred Heart Hospital
The drive to Saint Jude’s Children’s Hospital in Manhattan was a blur of flashing emergency lights, screaming tires, and the terrifying sound of Rachel’s ragged breathing in the backseat.
Gareth drove my armored SUV like a man possessed, cutting through afternoon traffic while I held Rachel against my lap, keeping her wrapped in my heavy wool coat. Her skin was burning with a sudden, violent fever, and her contractions were coming every two minutes—far too early, far too fast.
"Hold on, Rachel," I pleaded, pressing my lips against her damp hair. "Just hold on for me, baby. Please. I can't lose you."
"The baby..." she gasped, her hands clutching her stomach in agony. "Michael... save the baby... don't let her take the baby..."
"Nobody is taking anything from us," I swore through gritted teeth.
When we screeched to a halt under the emergency canopy of the hospital, a team of trauma nurses and obstetricians was already waiting with a gurney, alerted by Gareth’s calls ahead.
They transferred Rachel onto the bed, immediately hooking up oxygen and IV lines as they wheeled her at a run down the corridor toward the operating rooms.
"Sir, you need to wait here!" a nurse shouted, stopping me at the double doors of the Surgical Intensive Care Unit.
"That is my wife and child!" I bellowed, trying to push past her.
Dr. Sarah Lin, a top maternal-fetal medicine specialist, stepped between us, her expression grave and intense. "Mr. Dawson! She is in severe placental abruption! Her body is in septic shock from an untreated infection, and she is bleeding internally! If we don't perform an emergency Cesarean section right now, you will lose both of them! Let us do our jobs!"
The word lose shattered my remaining composure. I stumbled backward against the tiled wall as the double doors slammed shut, leaving me standing alone in the sterile, fluorescent-lit hallway.
I looked down at my hands. They were covered in Rachel’s blood, mixed with the smell of bleach from the foyer floor.
Gareth walked up beside me, his tactical radio buzzing quietly on his chest. He handed me a wet towel and a bottle of water.
"Boss," Gareth said softly. "My team at the estate just finished searching Susan Miller's private office."
I slowly wiped the blood from my fingers, my eyes hollow, my voice dropping into a register colder than outer space. "What did they find?"
Gareth pulled a thick Manila folder from beneath his jacket and opened it.
"Susan wasn't just working for your mother, Mr. Dawson," Gareth reported, his voice tight with anger. "She was being paid three hundred thousand dollars through a shell company registered in the Cayman Islands. The injections Dr. Vance was giving Mrs. Dawson weren't prenatal vitamins. They were low-dose synthetic prostaglandin analogs—drugs designed to induce premature labor and cause severe physical distress over time."
I stared at him, my brain struggling to comprehend the sheer, monstrous evil of what he was telling me.
"They were trying to force a premature birth while you were out of the country," Gareth continued. "The plan was to document Mrs. Dawson's 'mental breakdown' and physical inability to care for the child, present the falsified medical records to a family court judge, declare her unfit, and hand full legal custody over to your mother, Evelyn Dawson."
"And Rachel?" I whispered, my chest heaving. "What were they going to do to Rachel after the baby was born?"
May you like
Gareth swallowed hard, looking down at the floor. "There was a draft agreement for an involuntary commitment to a private psychiatric facility in Switzerland. Permanent stay."
They didn't just want my child. They wanted to erase my wife from the face of the earth.
