Chapter 146 Chapter 146
Chapter 146 Chapter 146
Chloe’s POV
My sister was dead.
“She died alone,” I whispered brokenly. “Because I wasn’t there.”
“That’s not true,” Mia tried to say.
“I promised her,” I cried. “I promised I would fix everything.”
My knees buckled beneath me.
Pain shot through my back as I fell forward, clutching my stomach instinctively.
The scream that tore from my throat didn’t sound human.
It was raw.
Grief poured out of me uncontrollably.
Two people in comas.
One erased from memory.
One now buried.
And I was behind bars.
I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t think.
My vision blurred completely as sobs wracked my body.
“I killed her,” I whispered hoarsely. “If I hadn’t gotten involved with him… if I hadn’t fought… she wouldn’t—”
“You did not kill her,” Mia said firmly through tears. “You are not responsible for this.”
But the guilt swallowed me whole.
My body trembled violently.
A sharp pain gripped my abdomen.
The world tilted sideways.
Voices shouted in the background.
Guards rushing.
Mia calling my name.
I tried to focus, but everything was fading.
The last thing I felt was the cold floor against my cheek.
Then darkness took me.
The pain did not stop.
It intensified.
Wave after wave tore through my body, each contraction stronger than the last, yet nothing progressed. The doctors moved quickly around me, voices overlapping, machines beeping in sharp, frantic rhythms.
“She’s not dilating properly,” someone said.
“Blood pressure is dropping.”
“Prepare for emergency intervention.”
Their words floated in and out of my consciousness like distant echoes.
I gripped the sheets so tightly my knuckles turned white. My entire lower body felt like it was being split apart from the inside, yet there was no release. No cry of a newborn. No movement forward.
Only pain.
My scream filled the room again, raw and broken.
“Please,” I sobbed. “Please don’t let my baby die.”
Another contraction hit me so violently that my vision blackened at the edges. My body arched involuntarily, and I felt warm tears stream down into my ears as I lay there helpless.
Hilda’s face flashed in my mind.
The hospital bed.
The machines.
The silence.
Jack’s betrayal.
The image overlapped with my current reality, and it felt like everything was collapsing into one unbearable moment.
“She died because of me,” I cried through clenched teeth. “This is my punishment.”
“Stop talking like that,” Mia’s voice trembled somewhere near my head. She was holding my hand, but I could barely feel it.
The grief mixed with physical agony until I couldn’t separate one from the other. Every contraction felt like it carried both the loss of my sister and the fear of losing my child.
The doctor leaned over me, urgency in his eyes.
“You need to stay conscious,” he said firmly. “Focus on your breathing.”
I tried.
I truly tried.
But my body was shutting down under the pressure. My heart was racing too fast. My breathing was shallow and uneven. I could hear the monitor reflecting it.
“She’s going into shock,” someone said.
I shook my head weakly.
“No,” I whispered. “Not again.”
The room blurred. The ceiling lights fractured into streaks. I felt weightless and heavy at the same time.
The pain did not stop.
It burned through my abdomen, radiated down my spine, and pulsed into my chest. My muscles trembled uncontrollably.
“Her pulse is unstable.”
“She’s losing too much strength.”
The doctor’s face hovered above me again.
“We may have to operate.”
Operate.
The word barely registered before another violent contraction seized me. I cried out, my voice cracking as tears streamed down my temples.
“I can’t lose this baby,” I whispered hoarsely. “I can’t lose anyone else.”
My body felt like it was being torn apart from the inside, yet there was no relief, no progress. The baby was not descending. My body was fighting itself.
Grief flooded back in waves just as powerful as the contractions.
Hilda.
Her laugh.
Her voice.
Gone.
And now I was lying here, fighting for another life that might be taken from me too.
The thought crushed me.
My chest tightened sharply, and for a terrifying second, I couldn’t breathe.
The monitors beeped faster.
“She’s crashing,” someone said urgently.
Cold sweat covered my skin. My hands felt numb. My vision narrowed to a small tunnel of light.
“I don’t want to die,” I whispered faintly.
The doctor’s voice became distant.
“Stay with us.”
I tried to hold on.
For the baby.
For the promise I made.
But the pain was too much.
My body convulsed once more as another contraction tore through me, and then everything began to fade into a hazy blur of sound and light.
The baby had not come.
And I was slipping dangerously close to losing my life along with it.