Chapter 2

The emergency lights had died, leaving only my phone glowing near my hip. Its pale screen reached the crushed panel but not the corners, turning the blood on my raised fingertips black.

I sat folded around my trapped leg, counting the cable hum between contractions. A firefighter’s voice reached me through the intercom. “Tell me when the pain returns. Don’t pull against the metal.” His calm made the danger precise, not smaller.

I stretched until two fingers caught the phone case and dragged it across the floor. Nathan’s location still showed the resort infirmary.

He had not returned to the shaft.

I typed with one thumb: *I’m bleeding. Grace isn’t moving. Come back.*

The message changed to *Read*. I watched the screen until his reply appeared.

*The rescue team is already with you. I can’t cut you out. Victoria needs to be checked.*

Safety reported that Victoria was walking with a minor abrasion and possible sprain. Nathan stood with her inside the staffed infirmary.

And he stayed with her anyway.

Another contraction folded me over the trapped leg. I tasted blood where I bit my cheek and pressed Nathan’s name on the call screen.

He declined it.

Static broke over the intercom, followed by June’s voice. She was above me—close enough to imagine and too far away to touch.

“If I stop answering, keep talking,” I said.

“You’re going to keep answering.”

For twenty minutes, she gave me things to return to. She described Grace’s unassembled crib; I told her where the screws were. We named the tiny clothes in my hospital bag, building a future aloud because the present might take it away.

The cutting tool screamed against the panel, throwing orange sparks over the walls. Metal released my leg one fraction at a time while contractions stopped giving me rest.

Firefighters fitted a harness beneath my shoulders and lifted me out. The corridor lights struck hard after the darkness, whitening June’s face as she knelt beside me, both hands hovering because even comfort might hurt.

I searched the corridor behind her. It was empty.

Nathan was still at the infirmary.

The medics lost Grace’s heartbeat during the transfer and recovered it too slowly. One called the operating room while another cut fabric from my swollen leg. June stayed beside the stretcher whenever the ceiling blurred.

At the hospital, everything happened in verbs.

Sign. Breathe. Turn. Do not eat. Do not close your eyes.

The obstetrician said the impact may have separated the placenta. Grace was in distress; delivery had to come before treatment for my leg.

“Will she survive?”

“This is the best chance for both of you.”

A nurse asked for my wedding ring. I worked it over my swollen knuckle and placed it in June’s palm. The pale skin underneath frightened me less than returning to a man who had read my plea and stayed away.

“Organize my documents and personal accounts,” I said. “If I wake up, I won’t go home with him again.”

June closed her fingers around the ring. She understood that pain had only removed my last excuse for delaying the decision.

The operating-room lights erased the ceiling. Pressure moved through my body behind the blue curtain while doctors called numbers I could not understand.

I waited for the cry every birth story promised.

Grace entered the world in silence.

I saw one impossibly small foot before the neonatal team carried my daughter through another door.