I laughed once, but there was no humor in it. The sound hurt my throat.
“Sophie.”
Elena’s eyes flickered.
“You know about her?”
“I know she was in the room. I know she lied. I know Cameron believed her.”
Elena leaned back slightly. “What did she lie about?”
I told her.
Not dramatically. Not with tears. I simply described Sophie leaning close, nails pressing into the soft inside of my arm, the medication tray clattering, the immediate transformation of her face into wounded innocence.
Elena listened without interrupting.
When I finished, she stood and walked to the side of my bed. Gently, she lifted my arm.
There, half-hidden beneath tape and bruising from IV lines, were four crescent-shaped marks.
Elena’s jaw tightened.
“I want photographs taken for the record.”
“She’ll say it happened during delivery.”
“She can say many things.” Elena released my arm carefully. “Marks still have patterns.”
The door opened before I could answer.
A nurse stepped in, looking uncomfortable.
“Dr. Reyes? Dr. Bennett is insisting—”
“No,” Elena said.
“He says he’s her husband.”
Elena’s voice did not change. “And I am her physician. She does not want visitors.”
The nurse nodded and disappeared.
A moment later, Cameron’s voice came through the door.
“Amelia!”
I went still.
“Elena, open the door. I need to talk to my wife.”
His voice cracked slightly on the last word.
Wife.
That word had once meant late-night takeout eaten from cardboard containers, his head in my lap while he fell asleep over research papers. It had meant dancing barefoot in our kitchen during a thunderstorm. It had meant whispered promises at 2 a.m. when both of us were too tired to pretend medicine had not taken more from us than it gave.
Now it sounded like a credential he was trying to use to gain access.
Elena moved toward the door.
I stopped her.
“Wait.”
She turned back.
I swallowed against the pain in my throat. “Let him in.”
Her expression sharpened. “Amelia—”
“Not alone. You stay.”
She studied me for a long second, then nodded.
When the door opened, Cameron looked as though the night had carved pieces out of him.
His surgical cap was gone. His hair stood in uneven strands where he had run his hands through it. His white coat was wrinkled. There was a faint smear of something dark near his cuff, probably iodine, perhaps something else. His eyes were bloodshot.
Behind him, two security officers stood at the nurses’ station.
Cameron stepped into the room and stopped when he saw me awake.
His face crumpled.
“Amelia.”
He said my name as if it were a prayer.
I felt nothing.
No—that was not true.
I felt too much, but none of it moved toward him.
“You have five minutes,” Elena said.
Cameron looked at her sharply. “This is between me and my wife.”
“No,” I said.
His eyes snapped to mine.
My voice was hoarse, but steady.
“It became something else when you turned off my epidural, ignored medical advice, restrained me, and entered a false note into my chart.”
The color drained from his face.
He looked at Elena, then back at me. “You don’t understand.”
“I understand charts.”
“Amelia, I was scared.”
That almost broke something loose inside me.
Not because it was enough.
Because once, I would have wanted it to be.
“You were scared of what?” I asked. “The baby being too big? My pressure dropping? The nurse warning you? Or were you scared that Sophie might think you didn’t protect her?”
His mouth opened.
No answer came.
I watched him search for the right words the way I had watched relatives in the ER search for excuses after accidents that should never have happened.
Finally, he said, “She told me you had been hostile to her for weeks.”
I blinked.
“That is what you want to lead with?”
His face tightened. “She said you resented her being on my service. That you thought she was trying to come between us. That you threatened to have her removed from the program.”
“I spoke to her twice before last night.”
“She showed me messages.”
The room went quiet.
“What messages?”
Cameron’s expression shifted, and for the first time I saw uncertainty break through his fear.
“Texts,” he said slowly. “From your number.”
“I never texted her.”
He stared at me.
I stared back.
Elena stepped forward. “Dr. Bennett, did you preserve those messages?”
“They’re on Sophie’s phone.”
“Not yours?”
“She showed me screenshots.”
Elena closed her eyes briefly, as if summoning patience from somewhere beyond human limits.
“You made clinical decisions during a high-risk delivery based partly on screenshots shown to you by an intern?”
Cameron flinched.
“I thought—”
“No,” I said quietly. “You didn’t.”
The words hit him harder than if I had shouted.
He moved toward the bed, then stopped when Elena took one step between us.
His voice dropped.
“Amelia, I know I failed you. I know. I have replayed it again and again. When the monitor flatlined, I thought…” He swallowed. “I thought I had killed you.”
My eyes stung, but I refused to look away.
“Did you change my chart?”
He froze.
There it was.
