Chapter 115
Chapter 115
The hospital is a white box built to bleach out hope. Corridors gleam with chemical polish; the air is all recycled breath and sharp antiseptic. In the private room at the end of the maternity wing, Sophie lies folded in a bed so narrow her arms brush the rails. She’s more wires and plastic than woman now: IV line stitched into her wrist, pulse oximeter cinched on her finger, oxygen mask fogging with every shallow exhale. Her skin is the color of candle wax. The monitors beep in arrhythmic sympathy, a steady score for the staccato urgency flickering outside her window.
Steven stands in the corridor, pacing a rut in the industrial carpeting. He’s lost the tie, but otherwise looks out of place—dark suit, white shirt, shoes that shine even under these monstrous fluorescents. He stops, rubs his temples, checks his phone for the time, the news, a distraction—anything to hold back the fact that his daughter is three doors away and could, by the roll of a dice, never walk out again.
The door hisses open and the OB steps out, face composed in that way that tells you everything before she even opens her mouth.
“We’re prepping her for surgery,” the doctor says, clipboard pressed to her chest like a shield. “Placental abruption. There’s internal bleeding. The only way forward is to operate now.”
Steven breathes, just once, then: “Is she—?”
The doctor’s eyes flick. “There’s risk. For her and the baby. But it’s the only option.”
He nods, chin set, and follows her to the end of the hall, where a bank of forms waits to be signed. His hand shakes so much he has to grip the pen in a fist, like a child, and he can barely read what he’s writing. He checks the boxes, scrawls his name, then stands there, swallowing against a throat full of broken glass.
He returns to the waiting area, but can’t sit. Instead he circles, back and forth, the soles of his shoes whispering across tile. He calls the nurses’ station twice, is told both times: “We’ll update you when there’s news.” The second time, the nurse’s tone is gentle, almost practiced, as if she’s said these words a hundred times already tonight.
It’s only when the room empties out—other families gone, the TV’s soundless cartoons looping for no one—that Steven finally slides into a chair. He pulls out his phone, hesitates, and then dials Virginia.
The call rings. Once. Twice. Then her face, blurry with lag, appears on screen. Behind her, the familiar chaos of her studio: lamp-lit tools, open notebooks, an artifact half-unveiled on the bench. She looks tired, but her voice is steady.
“Dad? Is everything okay?”
He tries to answer, but the words snag. For a second, all he can do is blink against the sting in his eyes. When he does speak, the voice isn’t his; it’s raw, hollowed out. “It’s Sophie. She’s in surgery. Emergency. They’re not sure—” He stops, breathes in hard. “They’re not sure she’ll make it.”
Virginia’s face goes slack, her mouth open but wordless. Then she snaps into motion: “I’ll be there. I can get a flight, or—”
Steven shakes his head. “No. Stay. Just—keep your phone on. I’ll update you. If anything happens—”
She nods, dabs her eyes. “What happened?”
He gives her the clinical version. Placental abruption. Massive blood loss. Surgery is the only option. He finds himself speaking in the doctor’s clipped cadences, like if he keeps it technical, it will hurt less.
Virginia listens, silent, her eyes darting offscreen—maybe searching for something to anchor her, maybe just looking for a way out of the conversation. But there isn’t one, and they both know it.
“I’m sorry,” she says finally. “She’ll pull through. She always does.”
Steven nods, but it’s a reflex. “Yeah,” he says. “She’s strong.”
The video freezes for a second, then catches up. Virginia is biting her lip now, hands restless in her lap. She wants to say something else—maybe about the secret in her own studio, the hidden history waiting for her to admit it. But the crisis drowns out everything except the need to be here, to be family, to not make things worse.
“I’ll be on standby,” she says, forcing brightness into the words. “Call me if you need anything. I’ll set up a group chat with Derek and Ethan, too. We should—” She cuts herself off, but Steven nods anyway. The four of them, facing this together.
He thanks her, then hangs up, the phone screen reflected in the polished surface of the coffee table. He stares at it until the numbers blur, until the sounds of the hospital reclaim his attention: a gurney squealing down the hallway, the bass-thump of coded urgency overhead, the endless, circular beeping of machines that can’t afford to fail.
Steven sits, hands folded, back ramrod straight. He waits for a sign, for a nurse or a doctor or even a change in the status on the monitor. But mostly, he waits for the night to end, for the world to shrink back down to something he can control. He waits to know, one way or the other, whether the last thread holding his family together will hold.
In the studio, on the other end of the line, Virginia stares at her own reflection in the black glass of the phone, artifact and secrets forgotten for the moment. She promises herself she’ll hold it together, that when the next call comes, she’ll be the strong one. She owes her father that, at least.
In the hospital, Steven clasps the phone in both hands, as if he can will it to ring. He doesn’t pray—he never has—but in the silence that follows, it’s hard not to hope for something, anything, that will break through the white noise and bring Sophie back.