Chapter 1 - The Weight of Two Hearts
The steering wheel tore into the meat of my palms as the tires hydroplaned across two lanes of standing water on the Edens Expressway. Red tail lights smeared across the windshield in streaks of blurred violence.
"Which one?" My voice was not a sound I recognized. It was animal, scraped raw against the lining of my throat. "Brennan, which one stopped breathing?"
"The boy," Brennan answered, static chewing through the cellular band as lightning fractured the black cloud shelf above Lake Forest. "His name is Leo. He's suffering from acute respiratory distress following blunt thoracic trauma from the car seat harness. The clinic’s backup generators failed twelve minutes ago when an oak crushed the transformer. Dr. Vance has intubated him manually with a bag valve mask, but they don't have pediatric critical care telemetry. Highland Park Hospital is under a divert order due to basement flooding. They’re rerouting the transport to Lake Forest Pavilion."
"And the other one?" My foot was pinned to the floorboard. The twin-turbocharged V8 engine of the Audi roared, the needle climbing past ninety through sheets of blinding, horizontal rain. "The second baby?"
"Maya," Brennan said, his voice tightening. "Eight months old. Minor contusions, stable oxygen saturation, but she’s hypothermic. She won’t stop screaming, Mr. Pike. And your ex-wife..."
He trailed off. The silence on the Bluetooth line was heavier than the thunder shaking the vehicle's chassis.
"Tell me," I ordered, my jaw clenching until my molars ground like stone. "Tell me what happened to Arden."
"Her vehicle was t-boned on the driver's side at the intersection of Route 176 and Saint Mary’s Road by a commercial delivery van that lost traction on the grade," Brennan said. "The driver-side door buckled inward into the cabin. She threw herself across the center console to shield the rear-facing seats before the impact crushed the B-pillar. She has multiple compound rib fractures, a pulmonary contusion, and a suspected intracranial hemorrhage. She regained consciousness long enough to refuse transport until both infants were cleared. Then she arrested. They brought her back with two shocks on the pavement. She’s in the trauma bay right now."
She threw herself across the center console.
The air in my lungs turned to liquid nitrogen. Twelve months ago, I had sat across a dining table and told Arden Vale that she was too emotional, that her attachment to things that couldn't be quantified was a liability, that our life had become a cage of domestic disappointments. She had spent three years weeping into my shoulder every time a pregnancy test turned white, and when God finally gave her what her soul had screamed for, she had carried it into exile alone because she knew her husband was a hollow man in an expensive suit.
"I’m eight minutes away," I snarled into the mic, cutting the wheel hard onto the Deerfield Road exit ramp, the tires screaming against wet asphalt as the tail end broke loose before the all-wheel drive grabbed traction. "Call the surgical director at Lake Forest. Tell them Sterling Pike is on-site in five minutes. If they need pediatric surgical teams, tell them to spool up the helipad for the pediatric ECMO unit from Lurie Children’s in Chicago. I will pay whatever charter fee they write on the invoice. Tell them if my son stops breathing, I will tear that county down to the topsoil."
"Mr. Pike," Brennan said, his tone turning clinical, protective, and cold. "Arden’s medical power of attorney does not list you. It lists her sister, Claire, who is currently on an international flight over the Atlantic. As of this second, under Illinois statutory law, you are an unverified biological claimant. If you walk into that emergency room demanding authority without legal paternity on file, hospital security will detain you."
"Let them try," I said, and slammed the phone into the cradle.
The flashing red and amber beacons of emergency vehicles illuminated the rain-slick facade of Lake Forest Hospital like an open wound against the dark trees.
I didn't park. I drove the sedan straight up onto the concrete apron of the ambulance bay, clipping a orange rubber pylon, the engine idling in a high-pitched whine as I kicked the door open into the downpour.
The rain hit me like iron buckshot, soaking through my tailored Italian wool jacket in two seconds, plastering my hair to my forehead. I didn't feel the cold. I didn't feel my legs moving.
I hit the automatic sliding doors of the trauma center with the full momentum of my shoulders.
The reception bay was chaos. Water was seeping under the eastern fire doors, nurses were shouting orders over the shriek of backup emergency batteries, and two sheriff’s deputies stood near the intake desk directing gurney traffic from the highway pileup.
"Where are the Vale infants?" I roared, my voice cutting through the sirens, the monitors, and the crying like a rifle shot.
A charge nurse with gray hair and blood on her scrubs spun around, her eyes widening in immediate defensive fury. "Sir, you cannot be back here! This is an active trauma intake—"
"Sterling Pike," I said, stepping directly into her space, my hands held out, flat, trembling with an electric violence I couldn't suppress. "Arden Vale's ex-husband. The father of the twins. Where are my children?"
From down the hall, through the double swinging doors of Trauma Bay Two, a sharp, mechanical alarm began to scream—a flat, high-pitched continuous tone that every human being recognizes in their marrow.
Code Blue. Pediatric.
May you like
The nurse’s face drained of color.
I didn't wait for her permission. I shoved past the deputies, my dress shoes slipping on the wet linoleum, and threw my weight against the double doors.
