The silence in the room became so heavy it felt hard to breathe.
Lorraine froze. For the first time since I had met her, the immaculate, terrifying composure of Lorraine Elise Whitaker cracked. Her eyes darted from the red recording circle on Celia’s phone to the nurse’s impassive face.
“Excuse me?” Lorraine’s voice lost its velvet purr. It was sharp now, brittle. “Do you have any idea who you are speaking to? Turn that off immediately. It is illegal to record without consent.”
“Georgia is a one-party consent state, Mrs. Whitaker,” Celia said calmly, not moving an inch. She didn’t reach for the phone. Instead, her hand hovered over the blue ‘Code’ button on the wall. “And hospital policy dictates I call security when an unauthorized individual attempts to remove a tagged infant from the maternity ward. Now, put the baby back in his mother’s arms. Slowly.”
Lorraine’s jaw tightened. She looked at me, bleeding and shaking in the bed, and then at the nurse who refused to be bullied by a silk coat and a famous last name.
With a look of pure, venomous disgust, Lorraine stepped forward and practically shoved my son against my chest.
I wrapped my weak arms around him, burying my face in his warm, cotton-swaddled head. He let out a soft, sleepy whimper. Tears of absolute relief poured down my face, mixing with my sweat. I held him so tightly my IV lines pulled taut.
“You will be fired for this,” Lorraine hissed at Celia, straightening her blouse. “By sunrise, you won’t be able to find work at a veterinary clinic in this state.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Celia replied coldly. “I’m calling the attending physician.”
Before Celia could press the intercom, the heavy wooden door clicked open again.
“Mother? Is everything alright?”
It was Evan.
He walked into the dim room, looking perfectly rested. His hair was neatly combed, his designer sweater immaculate. He didn’t rush to my side. He didn’t ask why I was crying, or why I was clutching our newborn like a life raft.
He looked directly at his mother.
“Evan!” I gasped, my voice breaking. “Evan, your mother just tried to take him. She threatened to have me committed—Evan, she was going to steal our baby!”
I waited for the shock to hit his face. I waited for my husband to become my protector, to throw his mother out of the room, to hold me and tell me I was safe.
Instead, Evan sighed. It wasn’t a sigh of shock; it was the exhausted, irritated sigh of a man whose schedule had been slightly delayed.
He didn’t look at me. He looked down at his hands. That was when I noticed he wasn’t holding a cup of coffee from the cafeteria.
He was holding a thick, cream-colored manila folder.
“I told you to wait in the hall, Mother,” Evan said quietly. “We agreed I would handle the paperwork first.”
The room started to spin. The copper taste of blood flooded the back of my throat.
“Evan…?” I whispered, the name catching in my throat. “What paperwork?”
Lorraine let out a dry, humorless laugh, moving to stand behind her son. “She’s hysterical, Evan. Just like Dr. Aris predicted. She’s already hallucinating threats. It’s exactly what happened to her own mother.”
“Evan, look at me,” I begged, but he wouldn’t.
He stepped closer to the foot of my bed, opening the folder. “Tessa, please don’t make this difficult. Dr. Aris has reviewed your chart, your severe blood loss, and your… family history. Given your current state of postpartum psychosis, he’s signed off on an involuntary 72-hour psychiatric hold.”
“I don’t have psychosis!” I screamed, clutching my son closer. “I’m just bleeding! I’m just tired! Celia heard her! The nurse recorded everything!”
I pointed desperately toward the tray table.
Evan finally looked at Celia, his eyes narrowing. But Lorraine just smiled—a terrible, triumphant smile.
“Oh, Evan,” Lorraine purred. “Don’t worry about the nurse. We’ll buy her silence, or we’ll ruin her. It doesn’t matter. The transfer papers are already signed.”
“Transfer?” I choked out. “Transfer where?”
Evan finally met my eyes, and the utter lack of emotion in them terrified me more than anything his mother had done.
“To the Whitaker private facility upstate,” Evan said clinically. “You need rest, Tessa. And my son needs to be safe.” He paused, his eyes dropping to the baby in my arms. “We can’t risk him ending up like Thomas.”
My breath completely stopped.
Thomas.
I had been married to Evan for three years. I had dated him for two. I knew every member of his wealthy, sprawling family. I knew every aunt, uncle, and cousin.
There was no one in the Whitaker family named Thomas.
“Who is Thomas?” I whispered, my heart hammering against my ribs.
Evan’s face went entirely pale. He snapped his mouth shut, realizing his mistake. Lorraine’s head whipped around to glare at her son, a look of pure, murderous rage flashing across her elegant features.
“Get security,” Lorraine snapped at Evan, dropping the polite facade entirely. “Get Dr. Aris in here now. Take the baby.”
As Evan moved toward the bed, Celia silently grabbed her phone from the tray table, hitting a button on the screen before shoving it deep into her scrubs. She stepped directly between my husband and my hospital bed, her hands raised.
“If you touch her,” Celia said, her voice dropping to a dangerous, deadly whisper, “I will hit send. And the police won’t be the only ones to receive the audio file about what happened to Thomas.”
Evan stopped dead in his tracks. Lorraine physically recoiled, the color draining from her face.
I sat in the bed, bleeding, clutching my newborn son, staring at the quiet night nurse who suddenly knew my husband’s darkest secret.
Celia slowly turned her head to look at me, and in her eyes, I saw something that made my blood run colder than the IV fluid.
She didn’t just happen to be in this room. She had been waiting for them.
