Chapter 4 - The Glass Floor
"Sir?" Donald’s voice came from the front seat, uncertain, cautious. "Where to?"
Grant couldn't speak.
His lungs felt as if they had been filled with liquid lead. His eyes were fixed on the black screen of his phone, which had gone dark after Dr. Thorne hung up.
Fetal heartbeat.
The words didn't make sense. They didn't fit into any category of knowledge he possessed about Claire Dawson.
Claire was twenty-nine. She worked forty hours a week at Starlight Children's. She ran five miles every Sunday morning along the East River. She drank green tea with ginger. She was clean, whole, organized, and entirely predictable.
Fetal heartbeat.
"Bellevue," Grant rasped out. The word came out like a broken piece of glass. "Drive to Bellevue now, Donald! GO!"
Donald hit the accelerator. The heavy Mercedes surged forward, running two red lights on Park Avenue, its tires screaming as it rounded the corner onto 34th Street.
Grant stared out the window, but he saw nothing.
11:45 PM.
She had crashed at 11:45 PM.
That was two minutes after her second text message.
That was four minutes after he had looked at her name glowing on his phone screen and pressed the red circle because he was explaining a one-hundred-and-forty-thousand-dollar discrepancy on a sixty-million-dollar spreadsheet.
“She’s just being dramatic again.”
He pressed his face into his hands. His palms were damp with a cold, greasy sweat.
She had been driving to his office.
She had been coming to tell him.
In the freezing rain, through Midtown traffic, with nine weeks of life growing inside her—a life he hadn't known about, a life she had carried through her entire ten-hour shift like a secret gift—she had been driving to the forty-second floor because he hadn't answered her calls.
"Dear God," Grant whispered into his empty hands. "Dear God, please."
He had never prayed in his life. He had spent forty-one years believing that prayer was the excuse weak men used when they lacked the skill or money to fix their own problems. He had believed in contracts, in land titles, in cash reserves, and in his own iron will.
Now, as the Mercedes pulled up to the red emergency overhang of Bellevue Hospital, Grant Holloway would have traded every warehouse, every share of stock, every dollar of his sixty-million-dollar acquisition to turn the clock back three hours.
He threw the car door open before Donald had even brought the vehicle to a complete stop.
He ran through the automatic double doors into the emergency room.
The smell hit him first—bleach, copper, floor wax, and old sweat.
The waiting room was a nightmare of bright lights and miserable human noise: a crying child in the corner; an old man coughing into a bloody handkerchief; two police officers sitting near the security desk talking about a sports game.
Grant shoved his way past a nurse carrying a tray of IV bags.
"Claire Dawson!" he shouted, his voice echoing off the tile walls. "Where is Claire Dawson?!"
A security guard stepped forward, placing a heavy hand on Grant’s chest. "Sir, you need to calm down. Step back behind the yellow line—"
Grant grabbed the guard’s wrist with a grip so violent, so desperate, that the man’s eyes went wide with surprise.
"Where is she?" Grant hissed, his eyes bloodshot, his tailored suit jacket twisted at the shoulders. "I am Grant Holloway. Where is she?!"
A tall woman in blue surgical scrubs stepped out through the double doors leading to the trauma bays. She was pulling off a pair of rubber gloves that were stained with dark, dried blood near the cuffs.
She looked at Grant’s face—at his expensive suit, his wild, terrified eyes, his hands trembling at his sides.
"Mr. Holloway?" she asked quietly.
Grant released the guard’s wrist. He stepped toward the doctor, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. "Are you Dr. Thorne?"
"I am."
"Where is she?" Grant asked. "How is she? I need to see her."
Dr. Thorne didn't answer immediately. She motioned toward a small, windowless consultation room off the main hallway—a room with two plastic chairs, a small coffee table, and a box of tissues sitting on a laminate shelf.
The room where doctors took people when there was no good news left to give.
"No," Grant said, taking a step back from the door. "No. Tell me here. Right here."
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Dr. Thorne looked at him with a quiet, devastating pity that made Grant’s knees buckle.
"Mr. Holloway," she said softly, her voice barely louder than a whisper over the hum of the hospital ventilation system. "We did everything we could."
