“Why would security need to know?”
Maya hesitated again.
Before she could answer, the curtain moved, and Dr. Elena Reyes stepped into the room carrying a tablet and a paper cup of coffee gone untouched.
She looked tired in a way that made her seem more human than I had ever seen her. Her shoulders were stiff, her eyes red at the edges, but when she saw I was awake, her face softened.
“Amelia.”
I had worked beside Elena for nine years. We had disagreed over protocols, argued over staffing, and once spent three hours in a supply closet during a hospital lockdown calmly rationing granola bars and insulting hospital administration in whispers.
I had never seen her look at me with pity.
I did not want to see it now.
“How bad?” I asked.
She pulled a chair close to the bed.
“Elena.”
She sat down. “You survived because your body fought hard and because the team responded quickly once I arrived.”
“That is not an answer.”
A faint, humorless smile touched her mouth. “No. It isn’t.”
The beeping monitor filled the space between us.
Finally, she said, “You had significant hemorrhaging. We controlled it. You required transfusions. There was no hysterectomy.”
I absorbed that slowly.
No hysterectomy.
The possibility had been there, then. Close enough that she needed to name its absence like a blessing.
“And my son?”
“Currently charming every nurse in observation by refusing to sleep unless someone holds his hand.” Her voice warmed. “He is strong, Amelia.”
I covered my mouth, unable to stop the small broken sound that escaped.
Elena waited.
Then she placed the tablet on her lap.
“There will be a review.”
I looked at her.
“Of the delivery?”
“Of the delivery, the decisions leading up to it, the medication orders, and the conduct of everyone involved.”
The room seemed to sharpen.
“Medication orders?”
Elena glanced at Maya, who quietly slipped out and closed the door behind her.
When Elena spoke again, her voice was lower.
“Your epidural was discontinued without documented medical indication.”
“I know,” I said. “Cameron ordered it.”
“Yes.” Elena’s eyes held mine. “But that is not the only inconsistency.”
My fingers tightened around the blanket.
“What else?”
She inhaled carefully.
“Your chart shows a note entered shortly before active labor intensified. It claims you refused surgical intervention despite counseling.”
I stared at her.
“I never refused.”
“I know.”
“Who entered it?”
She did not answer immediately.
The silence was enough.
Cameron.
My husband had not only refused the procedure.
He had created a record that made it look as though I had chosen the risk myself.
For several seconds, I could not breathe around the pressure building inside my chest.
It was not panic.
It was the terrible effort of rearranging reality.
Seven years of marriage taught a person to excuse many things. Stress. Pride. Exhaustion. Miscommunication.
But there were decisions that could not hide behind those words.
A forged note was not confusion.
It was intention.
“Why?” I whispered.
Elena’s face changed again.
Not pity this time.
Concern.
“That is what we need to understand.”
