Beep… beep… beep.
"She's hyperventilating. Nurse, get me a syringe and the defibrillator! Clear!"
A violent jolt ripped through my chest, forcing a gasp from my lips. The shock of electricity seared through me, dragging me back from the blackness I had begun to surrender to.
"Her blood pressure is falling! Clear again!"
Another wave of fire tore through my body, forcing my back to arch against the bed. My vision flickered white, then black, then white again.
"She's stabilizing. Nurse, increase the drip frequency."
Their voices echoed as if they were underwater. My body felt unbearably heavy, yet light at the same time, like I was floating far above myself. For one blissful moment, I wanted to let go. I wanted to drift into the light and never return.
I didn't want to go back to my ugly life.
I didn't want to go back to Xavier.
I didn't want to go back to the mistakes I had made.
Marrying him against my parents' wishes had been the first. Ignoring their warnings because I thought I knew better that was the second. Xavier wasn't just cruel; he was a werewolf. A predator. And I had willingly walked into his jaws.
My eyelids fluttered. The light above me hurt my eyes , nearly blinding. Or maybe it was simply because I hadn't opened my eyes for hours. Slowly, the sterile white ceiling came into focus, and with it, the cold reality pressing down on me.
Before anyone spoke a word, I knew.
The life inside me was gone.
My hand drifted to my stomach, trembling fingers pressing against the flatness where a child had once stirred. The silence in my womb was deafening. My heart clenched with a grief too heavy to bear.
The door creaked open. A stern-looking doctor stepped in, clipboard in hand, his expression unreadable. His presence filled the room with a suffocating silence.
"How are you feeling, Mrs. Silvercrest?" His voice was calm, professional, rehearsed.
"I… I feel okay," I lied, forcing the words out past the lump in my throat. "Just a slight headache."
"That's completely normal. It will subside in a few hours." He paused, glanced at his notes, then at me. His eyes softened, though only slightly. "Mrs. Silvercrest… I'm afraid we lost the baby. The labor was premature."
The words hung in the air like shards of glass, cutting through what little was left of me. He didn't wait for my response. He simply nodded and left the room, his shoes clicking against the tile floor until the door clicked shut behind him.
I lay there in silence, staring at the ceiling as hot tears slid down the sides of my face and into my hair. This was my second miscarriage.
The emptiness inside me was unbearable, like someone had hollowed me out and left me a husk of who I once was.
The first time, it had been stress. I remembered sitting in the ultrasound room, the grainy black-and-white image flickering on the screen. "It's a girl," the doctor had said with a smile. For a fleeting moment, I had been filled with joy, hope, and love. But when I told Xavier, his expression darkened.
"A girl?" His voice was full of disdain, his jaw clenching. "You can't give me an heir?"
His words cut deeper than any knife. That night, he lashed out shouting, throwing things, his anger spiraling into violence. As if the gender of the child was my fault. As if my body had betrayed him.
Weeks later, the baby was gone. My baby girl. My precious daughter, stolen from me by his cruelty and my own sorrow.
And now… again.
I clutched my stomach, sobbing so hard my body shook against the thin hospital sheets. My chest ached, not just from the shocks of the defibrillator, but from the unbearable weight of grief pressing down on me.
I thought of the baby that would never take its first breath, never cry in my arms, never know love or safety. I thought of the life I had dreamed of giving, and the nightmare I had instead delivered them into.
And then I thought of Xavier.
The betrayal of hours ago burned anew in my veins walking in on him, hearing him command me to leave as if I were nothing, as if my presence in my own home was an inconvenience. The cruelty of watching him continue without remorse, without shame, even as my world collapsed.
He had broken me over and over again. I had endured the anger, the coldness, the obsession with an heir. I had justified his rage, convinced myself I was to blame, that if I only gave him what he wanted, things would change.
But this…
This was the final straw.
I wiped at my tears, my chest heaving, a new kind of resolve settling inside me.
I would not give him another chance to destroy me.
The grief still throbbed in my chest, raw and relentless, but beneath it, a seed of strength began to stir. For the first time in years, I allowed myself to imagine a life without him a life where I wasn't afraid to breathe, to speak, to exist.
Xavier had taken everything from me.
But he would not take me.
Not anymore.
I closed my eyes, inhaling shakily as I whispered to the empty room:
"I'm leaving him."