Chapter 2 - The Choice on the Edge of Ruin
“I am,” I said.
The word didn’t just leave my mouth; it slammed into the crowded hallway like an iron anvil.
The doctor—a lean man in his late fifties whose surgical cap was already soaked through with sweat—didn’t waste a single second judging my suit, my armed guards, or the dangerous aura radiating off me. He grabbed my arm with terrifying urgency.
“I’m Dr. Harrison, Chief of Maternal-Fetal Medicine,” he rasped, his eyes wide and bloodshot. “Your wife—ex-wife, whoever she is to you—is in stage-four heart failure. Her ejection fraction is below fifteen percent. Her lungs are filling with fluid, and every minute she remains pregnant, her heart is being squeezed to death. We have to perform an emergency classical C-section right now in OR 3.”
My breath caught in my throat like broken glass. “Save her.”
“Listen to me!” Dr. Harrison snapped, tightening his grip on my forearm until his knuckles turned white. “At thirty-four weeks, her body can’t handle general anesthesia without her blood pressure collapsing entirely. But she’s too unstable for an epidural. The survival rate for acute peripartum cardiomyopathy presented this late is catastrophic. I need your consent for an emergency hysterectomy if the bleeding doesn’t stop, and I need you to understand that if it comes down to a choice between her life and the baby’s... I need to know who I’m saving.”
The world shrank to a pinpoint of burning light. The sounds of telemetry monitors, rushing gurneys, and crying patients faded into deafening static.
Save who?
“You save both,” I growled, stepping so close to him that the doctor had to tilt his head back. My voice was a low, primal snarl. “You bring every specialist in this damn hospital into that room. You use whatever machine, whatever blood, whatever prayer you have to. If either of them dies on that table, Dr. Harrison, I will burn this hospital to the ground with my bare hands. Do you understand me?”
“Julian!”
A sharp, hysterical voice cut through the air. Madison marched toward us, her face flushed with red, blotchy rage. She grabbed my elbow, her manicured nails digging through the fabric of my suit jacket.
“Are you insane?!” she shrieked, totally unbothered by the medical staff staring at her. “You’re standing here threatening doctors over a woman who dumped you eight months ago? Look at you! You’re shaking! What about my stomach pain? What about the VIP room I asked for? You’re acting like a lunatic over some bastard child that probably isn’t even yours!”
I didn’t turn my body. I just slowly turned my head to look at her.
The look in my eyes must have been horrific, because Madison’s rant died instantly in her throat. She stumbled back half a step, letting go of my arm as if she had just touched white-hot iron.
“Jonas,” I called out, my voice deadly flat.
My lead security chief stepped forward instantly, his hulking six-foot-four frame blocking the light above Madison. “Sir?”
“Take Miss Chen outside,” I said without taking my eyes off the operating room doors. “Revoke her access to my penthouse. Cancel every credit card issued under my corporate name. Terminate her lease on the Bentley. And if she ever comes within five hundred feet of me, Elena, or my child again... handle it.”
Madison gasped, her eyes going wide with pure, disbelieving horror. “Julian! You can’t do this to me! My father is senior partner at Chen Global! We have a dinner with the mayor next week! You’re throwing away our future for an ex-wife who didn't even tell you she was carrying your child?!”
“Jonas,” I repeated quietly.
“Right away, boss.” Jonas grabbed Madison firmly by the upper arm. She began screaming obscenities, kicking her high heels against the tile as Jonas effortlessly dragged her down the hall toward the exit, her voice fading into the distance until the heavy double doors clicked shut behind them.
I turned back to Dr. Harrison, whose eyes were wide with shock.
“My name is Julian Vance,” I told him, reaching into my inner coat pocket and pulling out my secondary encrypted phone. “I have ten billion dollars in liquid assets and three private medical transport helicopters stationed at O’Hare. Tell me who the best cardiothoracic OB-GYN surgeon in the world is right now.”
“Dr. Evelyn Croft,” Harrison stammered, swallowing hard. “She’s the head of Obstetric Cardiology at Johns Hopkins. But she’s in Baltimore—”
I was already dialing.
“She’ll be on a jet in ten minutes,” I said into the phone before the line even finished ringing. “Get Elena prepped. I’m coming inside.”
“You can’t go into a high-risk sterile field!” Harrison protested.
I stepped right past him, pushing open the double doors of the surgical wing. “Try stopping me.”
The hallway beyond was a storm of blue scrubs, stainless steel trays, and frantic shouts. Through the small glass window of Operating Room 3, I saw her.
Elena lay stripped on the narrow surgical table, surrounded by six nurses and two anesthesiologists placing arterial lines into her wrists. She was gasping for oxygen through a heavy clear mask, her eyes rolling back into her head as her chest heaved violently. The cardiac monitor above her head was screaming in a high-pitched, steady beep:
Heart Rate: 168. Blood Pressure: 68/40.
“She’s crashing!” an anesthesiologist yelled. “We can’t wait for Croft! We have to cut NOW!”
My hand slammed against the glass window.
For eight months, I had convinced myself that I hated her. I had convinced myself that she left me because she couldn't handle the blood on my hands, because she found me cold, because she had fallen out of love. I had spent eight long months drowning my grief in whiskey, work, and meaningless distractions like Madison, pretending that my heart hadn't died the morning I woke up to an empty bed and a signed divorce decree.
But seeing her now—broken, drowning in her own fluids, holding onto our baby with her last thread of strength—I knew the truth.
I had never stopped loving her. Not for a single second.
“Elena!” I shouted against the glass, though I knew she couldn't hear me over the alarms. “Fight! Damn you, Elena, don't you dare die in there!”
May you like
The doors to the OR observation deck opened behind me, and Dr. Harrison handed me a sterile yellow gown and mask.
“If you’re coming in, scrub up,” Harrison said grimly. “Because in three minutes, we’re either going to witness two miracles, or I’m going to have to tell you that you lost everything.”
