In the Ambulance
After the climax, Eric drifted into a deep, heavy sleep. When he finally opened his eyes, harsh fluorescent glare and a swaying ceiling turned his thoughts to sludge.
"She's awake—we've got consciousness!" a woman shouted.
He blinked, vision smeared by motion. Disinfectant burned his nostrils—bleach and something medicinal that made his stomach lurch. Voices ricocheted above him, fast and clipped, as if they were talking over a machine.
"High rupture. Contractions are steady. Fetal heart tones look normal."
"She's stabilized. Clear her for L&D—vaginal delivery."
Patient. L&D. Vaginal delivery.
What the hell—?
His body felt like it weighed a ton. He tried to lift his hand and stared at a thin, pale wrist with an IV taped to the skin.
Wrong.
He tried to sit up, but hands in blue latex shoved him back down.
"Ma'am, stay still. Calm down. You went into shock, but you're stable now. You're going to see your babies soon."
Babies? What babies?
He tried to demand answers, to shout at them to get their hands off him—but the sound that tore from his throat was sharp and melodic, a woman's scream.
"What is this? What's happening to me?"
That voice.
He knew it.
Eleanor.
His hand shook as it dropped to his stomach. It was high and tight, skin stretched to the breaking point over a hard, heavy swell. Beneath the surface, pain rolled in agonizing waves—tightening, peaking, then ebbing just enough for him to drag in air.
"Fuck—what the fuck is this?" Panic swallowed him whole. "Eleanor! Where are you?"
He fought the straps, bucking against the gurney.
"Ma'am, you need to cooperate," a voice snapped. No warmth. Just clinical command.
"We need to keep her steady!"
Nylon dug across his chest and thighs, holding him to the narrow mattress. It wasn't meant to hurt, but to Eric it felt like being strapped to an altar. The more he thrashed, the tighter everything became—equipment, hands, rules—closing in until there was nowhere left to put his terror.
None of this belonged to him. One minute he'd been in Sophia's bed, sweat-slick and smug, his life arranged to spare him from consequences. Now he was trapped in a body engineered for labor—a body on the verge of splitting itself open.
Childbirth had always been something that happened to other people. A women's problem. Messy, inevitable, safely distant. He'd never once imagined the fear—the animal, gut-level terror—of being the one on the table.
The pain wasn't just physical; it was totalitarian.
It occupied every nerve.
The ambulance wailed into the emergency bay. Fluorescent lights bleached his vision. The stretcher surged into a corridor that reeked of bleach and adrenaline. Alarms chirped. Shoes squeaked. Voices rose and fell in a frantic medical rhythm, as if urgency itself had a pulse. With every jolt of the wheels, his body felt heavier, as if the very air had turned to lead and was pressing him down.
Wheels locked.
He was rushed into a room packed with cold metal and clinical urgency.
Two nurses leaned over him, checking lines, syncing monitors. Their voices stayed steady—professional, terrifyingly indifferent.
"Ma'am, we need to do a cervical check," one said. "Try to relax. We need to see how far you've dilated and how the babies are doing."
Cervical check?
Eric was about to be a father of three, but he couldn't have told you what that actually meant. He'd never sat through a single prenatal appointment; he'd always had "meetings." That was women's business. Background noise.
Then the reality of the words sank in.
His entire body seized.
A check. On him.
Humiliation detonated in his gut—hot, choking, foul—followed by rage so sharp his vision speckled.
This was a joke. A sick hallucination. He was a man. He didn't—he couldn't—
"Get away from me!" he roared, his voice cracking into a feminine sob. "I'm not a patient! I'm a man! Do you hear me? I'm a man!"
But the nurses didn't flinch. Training overrode hysteria. Hands pinned him down with practiced ease. Gloved fingers moved with brisk, terrifying efficiency, ignoring the fact that he was shaking, fighting, mentally splintering.
The sensation ripped through his dignity—cold, invasive, profoundly clinical. For the first time in his life, Eric Davis wasn't the one in charge.
He was just a body on a table.
Helplessness flooded in, thick and suffocating as tar.
Then another contraction hit.
It didn't just arrive; it clamped.
A brutal, invisible grip seized his abdomen and wrenched, as if trying to wring the life out of him. Darkness feathered at the edges of his vision. Pain and humiliation fused into a single crushing weight that dragged him under.
"Three centimeters," the nurse reported, tone as flat as a weather update. "Seventy percent effaced. Twin A is head-down at station minus one. Fetal heart tones are reassuring on both."
The doctor's eyes flicked from the monitor strip to the anesthesiologist.
"She was hypotensive in the field—altered, combative. Get the epidural in now while she's stable. If this turns into a crash section, I don't want to be playing catch-up."
The anesthesiologist rolled the cart in. "Pressure? Platelets?"
"Stable. Lab's pending," the nurse snapped.
"Ma'am, you need to cooperate. We're placing the epidural for your safety and the babies'."
"No!" Eric's voice cracked, tears spilling without his permission. "No—no anesthetic. I'm not doing this! I'm not having these babies!"
Nobody negotiated.
In their eyes, he was just another hysterical woman who didn't know what was best for her.
Strong gloved hands hauled him up, forced him onto his side, and jackknifed him into a fetal curl. His back arched, spine exposed to the biting chill of the room.
"Chin to chest," the anesthesiologist commanded, touch cold and efficient. "Don't move."
Antiseptic slapped onto his skin—wet, stinging. Then the needle came: sharp, clinical, deep.
A numbing chill spread along his spine, sliding downward like ice water.
He tried to buck, to throw himself off the bed, but the nurses held him down like a frantic animal. A raw, jagged sound tore from his throat. He couldn't wrap his mind around it. Couldn't accept the impossible.
He was in labor.
He was a prisoner inside her skin.
The hours dragged on—relentless, soul-crushing. When the epidural finally took hold, the pain didn't vanish; it retreated behind a foggy, thrumming wall. The pressure remained. The stretching. The inexorable shove of the body's internal machinery operating on its own brutal schedule, indifferent to his panic.
He lay on the delivery bed like an exhibit—naked, wired to monitors, stripped of privacy. Time blurred under the unforgiving fluorescent lights.
Each check.
Each cold, metallic instrument.
Each casual, practiced touch from a stranger.
Humiliation stacked on fear until his breathing turned thin and shallow.
Half-submerged in a drug-induced haze, he caught snippets of a nurse on the phone nearby. The words drifted through the ward like smoke.
"Stable… still early… no, it's fine… you can come tomorrow…"
Tomorrow.
He clenched his teeth until his jaw ached, the thud of his own pulse pounding in his ears.
He didn't know how long he'd been out when a cold, familiar sensation yanked him back to the surface—another cervical check. Shame flashed hot and nauseating. Pain threaded through the fog. His eyes snapped open, bloodshot and wild.
Still here.
Still trapped.
Still in hell.
He couldn't fight anymore. He begged for a phone, pride hollowed out and replaced by a desperate, animal need.
He didn't care how pathetic he looked. With the last shred of focus he had left, he fumbled the screen, found the contact, and dialed the only person who could possibly save him.
Himself.
—
Eleanor drove straight from Sophia's to the hospital.
Dawn washed the corridors in sickly gray. The air tasted of industrial disinfectant—sharp, sterile, cold enough to feel on the back of her tongue. Eleanor moved through it in Eric's body, strides long and purposeful, shoulders squared. Beneath her steady pace there was no room left for panic.
Instead, a dark, intoxicating hum of satisfaction vibrated in her chest.
For the first time in years, she felt powerful.
She found Labor and Delivery in minutes.
When she pushed the heavy door open, the scene inside hit her like a physical blow.
Her body—Eleanor's—was pinned to the bed. Hair matted to her temples with sweat. Skin the color of wet paper. Eyes sunken, rims bruised and bloodshot. Restraints had rubbed her wrists and ankles raw, the flesh angry and chafed.
The hospital gown was twisted and gaping, exposing the massive tight swell of her belly—skin stretched to a glassy shine, streaked with livid purple marks.
"Aah—" A short jagged cry ripped out of her.
The epidural was fading—patchy now, pain breaking through in sharp, clean lines. With the next contraction her whole body locked, breath snatched into ragged pulls.
The fetal monitor kept its quick, steady rhythm—maddeningly calm—while another wave crushed down and she clawed at the bed rail until her knuckles blanched. Then the shivering hit: violent, uncontrollable, as if her nerves had been plugged into a live wire.
"It hurts… too much… I can't…" The voice was thin, broken.
Eleanor's voice. Eric's soul.
In the doorway stood his body. But the gaze inside it wasn't his.
His face—her face—twisted into a mask of pure, unadulterated fury.
"Eleanor!" he roared, voice hoarse and shredded. His eyes locked onto her with a look that would have torn her apart if he had the strength. "Don't just stand there! Fix this. Switch us back. I can't take it!"
Eleanor stared at herself—at the wreck this marriage and his betrayal had left behind.
For a heartbeat something sour rose in her throat: a flicker of pity for the woman Eric had abandoned. Pity for the body still being forced to endure this.
Then Eric lifted his head and any lingering softness evaporated. His eyes sharpened with menace and command, and Eleanor's pity turned to ice.
A cold, delicious satisfaction slid down her spine.
"Switch back?" Eleanor's mouth pulled into a thin, mocking curve. She leaned in, close enough to invade his space, Eric's deep voice dropping to a low, intimate rumble. "You think I came with instructions?"
Eric flinched—just once—then his glare hardened into something frantic. "Stop talking." His breath rasped. "You're in my body. Make it work. Figure it out."
"Figure it out?" Eleanor drifted to the side of the bed, movements slow, almost lazy, her voice sweet in a way that mocked him. "What's there to figure out? Watching you suffer… it's heartbreaking. I'd do anything to take this pain for you, Eric."
"Bitch." His breath snagged. His face contorted—he recognized the line. He'd used it on her, over and over, whenever he wanted to sound like a devoted husband while doing nothing.
He writhed like a trapped animal, eyes flashing with desperate venom. "I'm warning you. I'm not having your babies. Give me my body back. Now! Or you'll never see them again."
Eleanor stepped closer. Her hand—Eric's hand—settled on the tight, hard curve of his belly with eerie, predatory gentleness. Her voice stayed cold, contempt woven into every syllable.
"You're threatening me with the kids?" She locked eyes with him. "Eric, you're forgetting something. The one giving birth right now… is you."
She watched his face contort under another wave of pain. "So tell me—how exactly do you plan to keep me from seeing them?"
He went rigid.
His gaze dropped to the swollen mound of his stomach, to the life churning inside—two small bodies waiting for him to drag them into the world. His hand shook as it brushed the skin. The strange internal flutter of life tangled with agony and snapped what little was left of him.
Dignity. Freedom. Identity.
All of it crushed into something purely functional.
A vessel. A body being used.
"You—what did you do to me?" His voice quivered, bravado finally bleeding out.
"What did I do?" Eleanor's eyes stayed flat, almost bored. Her smile held no warmth. "You should be asking what you did to me to get us here."
"It's you." Eric's pupils shrank to pinpricks. He lunged for her wrist, desperate, clawing strength in his fingers. "You did this. You hate me. You switched us—didn't you?"
Eleanor yanked free and stepped back, towering over him like a judge. No heat in her face. No mercy.
"Oh?" she said softly. "And why would I hate you, Eric?"
Eric froze.
In the middle of the next surge, a sliver of terrifying clarity cut through the haze. His voice dropped, suddenly cautious, layered with dread.
"Eleanor… when you woke up… where were you?"
Eleanor's jaw locked. "Where you fell asleep is where I woke up."
She held his gaze until he couldn't breathe. "You tell me."
The color drained from his face, leaving him sickly gray. His lips trembled. His eyes darted around the room, panic tracing every line. Sweat beaded at his hairline and tracked down his temples.
"Listen. I can explain. It's not what it looks like—"
Eleanor straightened, expression unreadable and icy.
"Go ahead," she said, crossing her arms. "Explain. I'm listening."
"I… I was with her. We were just… we were…"
The words died in his throat, choked off by the weight of his own filth.
He couldn't build a lie fast enough. His mind spun with excuses, but his body was out of time.
A massive contraction slammed into him and his entire frame went stiff as a board. A scream tore from his lungs—raw, guttural, jagged. It wasn't the sound of a patient. It was the sound of a man being broken.
A nurse caught the sound and hurried in, the door swinging wide with a clinical thud. She lifted the gown with brisk, practiced hands, all business.
"We need to check you now," she said, voice a calm anchor in the middle of his chaos.
Gloved fingers moved with terrifying efficiency.
"You're fully dilated," the nurse announced, steady as she looked up at the monitors. "Twin delivery. It's time."