Chapter 1 - THE SILENCE
The first sound I remember from the ambulance was my husband saying my name over and over.
“Hannah, look at me.”
I wanted to answer Ethan.
I wanted to tell him I was fine.
But I wasn’t thinking about myself.
Both of my hands were pressed against my stomach.
“Why isn’t she moving?”
The paramedic beside me adjusted the monitor and told me to keep breathing.
His calm voice terrified me more than panic would have.
Twenty minutes earlier, my sister Lauren had looked directly into my eyes and kicked me in the stomach.
Now every second without movement felt endless.
Ethan sat beside the stretcher with one hand wrapped around mine.
His other hand still held his phone.
He had already sent our cousin Caleb’s video to the police.
Nobody could erase what had happened now.
Not Lauren.
Not my parents.
Not anyone.
When we reached St. Matthew’s Medical Center, doctors surrounded me immediately.
Ethan was forced to stay outside while they examined me.
I stared at the ceiling.
“Please.”
My voice barely worked.
“Just tell me if my daughter is alive.”
The doctor didn’t answer immediately.
She moved the ultrasound probe slowly.
Then I heard it.
Fast.
Steady.
Beautiful.
My daughter’s heartbeat.
I broke down.
Ethan heard me crying from the hallway and pushed through the door before a nurse could stop him.
“She’s alive?”
I nodded.
He pressed his forehead against mine.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then Dr. Rebecca Collins became serious.
“The baby is alive, but you’re having contractions.”
My relief disappeared.
“From the kick?”
“Possibly.”
She hesitated.
“But there’s something else.”
Ethan straightened.
“What?”
Dr. Collins looked toward the nurse holding my chart.
“Your bloodwork showed traces of a medication you were never prescribed.”
I stared at her.
“What medication?”
“A drug that can increase the risk of bleeding and pregnancy complications.”
The room went completely silent.
I shook my head.
“I don’t take anything except prenatal vitamins.”
Dr. Collins studied me carefully.
“Then we need to determine how it entered your system.”
Ethan’s expression changed.
I had seen him angry before.
I had never seen him look like that.
“Run every test you need.”
He turned toward me.
“Who has access to your vitamins?”
I opened my mouth.
Then stopped.
My mother had brought me a new bottle three weeks earlier.
She said she had found a better brand.
I suddenly remembered how insistently she had told me to take them every morning.
My stomach turned.
“Ethan.”
He understood from my face.
“Your mother?”
Before I could answer, a police officer entered.
“Hannah Mercer?”
“Yes.”
“We recovered the video of the assault.”
He glanced at Ethan.
“But there’s a problem.”
“What problem?”
“Your father is claiming the documents involved in the argument belong to him.”
I remembered my mother slipping the inheritance papers into her purse while I lay on the grass.
“What documents?”
“The Mercer Family Trust.”
The officer stepped closer.
“According to your father, your unborn child has no legal connection to that trust.”
Ethan slowly looked at me.
That was when I remembered the sentence my grandmother had spoken before she died.
A sentence I had never understood.
“When your first child comes, everything changes.”
May you like
At the time, I thought she was talking about motherhood.
I was wrong.
