Chapter 3 - The Waking
The first thing I registered was the steady, rhythmic beep... beep... beep of a heart monitor.
The sound felt incredibly loud in the quiet room. My eyelids felt like they were made of lead, and when I finally managed to pry them open, the harsh fluorescent lights of the Intensive Care Unit blinded me.
Everything hurt. My throat was raw from an intubation tube that had recently been removed. My arms ached, heavy with multiple IV lines taping me to the bed. My abdomen throbbed with a dull, constant agony.
“Maya?”
A soft, tear-choked voice broke the silence.
I turned my head, wincing at the stiffness in my neck. Elena was sitting in a plastic chair beside my bed. She looked ten years older, her eyes red-rimmed with dark, heavy bags beneath them. She wore the same clothes from the day before, stained with dried, brown blood. My blood.
“Leo...” I croaked, my voice sounding like gravel. Panic immediately spiked my heart rate, making the monitor beep faster. “Where is my baby?”
Elena rushed forward, grabbing my pale hand. “He’s safe. He’s fine, Maya. He’s in the pediatric nursery being watched by the nurses. He’s healthy. You’re the one we almost lost.”
Tears spilled out of the corners of my eyes, rolling down my temples into my hair. The immense relief of knowing my son was safe temporarily washed away the physical pain.
“What... what happened?” I whispered.
Elena swallowed hard, her expression darkening. “You had a massive delayed postpartum hemorrhage. A piece of the placenta was left behind after the birth. It ruptured a major artery. Maya, you coded in the ambulance. Your heart stopped.”
A chill ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the cold hospital room. I had died. For a few terrifying minutes, I had left this earth. I had left Leo.
“The doctors had to do an emergency hysterectomy to save your life,” Elena continued, her voice breaking. “You needed six units of blood. They said if I had arrived ten minutes later...”
She couldn't finish the sentence. She pressed her forehead against my hand and wept openly.
I lay there, absorbing the gravity of her words. A hysterectomy. I could never carry another child. The finality of it was a heavy stone dropping into my stomach.
But beneath the grief for the children I would never have, another emotion was quietly taking root.
I remembered the cold indifference in Mark's eyes. I remembered him fixing his collar in the mirror. I remembered his cruel dismissal as I bled out on the floor.
“Mark,” I whispered, the name tasting like ash in my mouth. “Does he know?”
Elena lifted her head, her jaw clenching so hard a muscle twitched in her cheek.
“I called him twenty times,” she said, her voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. “I texted him. The hospital called him. He sent my calls straight to voicemail. His phone has been on Do Not Disturb for three days, Maya.”
Three days. I had been unconscious for three days.
“But he hasn't been completely off the grid,” Elena added, pulling out her phone. She opened a folder filled with screenshots.
She held the screen up for me to see. It was a digital timeline of Mark’s incredible weekend. Mark at the ski lodge. Mark doing shots with his college buddies. Mark at a luxury steakhouse. The timestamp on the last photo was from just two hours ago. He was smiling, his arm around a friend, completely oblivious to the fact that his wife had flatlined and his son had been rescued from a bloody crime scene.
A profound shift happened inside me in that hospital bed.
The Maya who existed before this weekend—the Maya who made excuses for his temper, who apologized to keep the peace, who believed she could love the selfishness out of him—died on the floor of that nursery.
The woman who woke up in the ICU was someone else entirely.
“Elena,” I said, my voice suddenly clear and steady despite the pain.
May you like
“Yes, sweetie?”
“Don't call him anymore. Let him come home to exactly what he left behind.”
