Chapter 5 - A Mother’s Desperation
While the empire on Lexington Avenue was collapsing under the weight of its own greed, Emily Carter was standing over a cracked ceramic sink in her Crown Heights apartment, gripping the porcelain with white-knuckled intensity.
A sharp, searing pain tore through her lower abdomen.
It wasn't Braxton Hicks. This wasn't the dull, muscular ache she had learned to endure over the past three months. This was a blinding, rhythmic knife twisting deep within her pelvic wall.
She looked down.
A thin line of dark crimson was trickling down her bare ankle, pooling on the worn linoleum.
“No,” she whispered, her voice choking on terror. “No, no, please, baby, not yet. Just four more weeks. Please, God, just four more weeks.”
Another contraction hit her, violent and unrelenting, dropping her instantly to her knees. She cried out, her forehead smacking against the rim of the bathtub. The pain was accompanied by a terrifying wave of dizziness—the unmistakable signal that the tumor was bleeding.
Her phone lay on the small wooden table in the adjacent room.
She tried to crawl, dragging her swollen body inch by inch across the cold floorboards. Every movement felt like dragging her belly through broken glass. “Help,” she gasped into the empty room. “Someone… please…”
Her hand finally reached the leg of the table. She pulled herself up just enough to knock the cracked MacBook and her cheap burner phone to the floor.
Her vision was tunneling into darkness. Black spots swarmed before her eyes.
She didn't dial 911. The last time she had called an ambulance in this neighborhood, it had taken forty-five minutes to arrive, and the county hospital had left her in a hallway for six hours because she lacked private insurance verification.
With shaking, bloody fingers, she hit the single contact stored in her emergency speed-dial.
Not Grant. She refused to believe Grant’s promises. Billionaires didn't save broken women; they discarded them.
She dialed the landline of Altura’s kitchen prep station, hoping against hope that Maria, the elderly pastry chef who had secretly slipped her leftovers and iron supplements, was already on shift.
The phone rang three times.
“Altura kitchen,” a gruff voice answered.
“Maria…” Emily choked out, her forehead pressed against the floor, blood soaking through her sweatpants. “Maria… I’m bleeding. The baby… I can’t breathe…”
“Emily?!” The voice on the other end wasn't Maria’s.
It was Grant.
He had just arrived in the lobby of Altura with his security team to seize the restaurant's security tapes of Vanessa’s confrontation the night before. He had heard the phone ringing at the hostess station while passing through.
“Emily! Where are you? Are you at the apartment?”
“Grant…” she sobbed, the phone slipping from her slick fingers. “It hurts… everything hurts… I’m sorry… I’m so sorry…”
The line went dead.
***
In the backseat of his armored Maybach, Grant Hale lost what remained of his sanity.
“Run every red light,” Grant told his driver, his voice a low, terrifying growl that brooked no hesitation. “If a patrol car gets behind us, do not stop. Hit the siren.”
The heavy Mercedes tore through Manhattan like a guided missile, tires screeching against wet asphalt as it blasted through intersections along Fourth Avenue, hurtling over the Manhattan Bridge toward Brooklyn.
Grant dialed Marcus Sterling while clinging to the door handle.
“Marcus! Get Dr. Angela Henderson on the phone right now! The Chief of Obstetrics at Mount Sinai!”
“Grant, what’s happening?”
“Clear the entire VIP surgical wing! I need an emergency neonatal surgical team, a gynecological oncology specialist, and four units of O-negative blood on standby at the Mount Sinai helipad or emergency bay! We have thirty minutes before she bleeds out!”
“Grant, Mount Sinai is in Manhattan! If she’s in Crown Heights during morning rush hour, an ambulance will never make it across the bridge in time!”
“Then call the NYPD Aviation Unit!” Grant bellowed, his veins bulging in his neck. “Tell the Police Commissioner that Grant Hale is donating three million dollars to the Police Athletic League this afternoon if a medical evacuation helicopter lands in Lincoln Terrace Park in ten minutes! Do it now!”
When the Maybach screeched to a halt outside the crumbling Crown Heights brownstone, Grant didn't wait for his security detail. He kicked open the building’s exterior door, splintering the aged wooden frame, and took the stairs three at a time.
He reached Apartment 3B and threw his entire weight against the lock. The door gave way with an explosive crack.
Emily lay motionless on the floor between the kitchen and the desk, curled in a fetal position around her belly. A pool of dark blood had spread across the floorboards.
“Emily!”
Grant dropped to his knees, sliding in the blood, his hands instantly cradling her pale, sweat-soaked face. Her skin was freezing. Her lips were a terrifying shade of bluish-gray.
“Grant…” she whispered, her eyelashes fluttering weakly. She was barely conscious. “The baby… he stopped moving… save him… please don't let him die…”
“You’re both going to live,” Grant said, tears finally spilling from his eyes as he stripped off his heavy cashmere coat and wrapped it securely around her trembling body. “Do you hear me? You’re not leaving me, Emily! You are not leaving me alone in this goddamn world!”
He scooped her into his arms. Despite the pregnancy, she felt horrifyingly light—a frail bundle of bone and willpower that had endured too much cruelty for too long.
As he kicked open the hallway door and carried her down the stairs, the rhythmic, deafening thud of helicopter blades began to shake the rusted windowpanes of the building.
May you like
The NYPD Medevac had just touched down in the middle of Lincoln Terrace Park.
***