Chapter 1 - The First Frame
The ambulance sirens were a distant wail, wrapped in the cotton wool of shock, but the red and blue flashing lights hit the marble foyer first, painting Eleanor’s face in alternating bars of guilt and innocence.
I didn't move. Moving meant acknowledging the fire tearing through my lower abdomen, the sickening grind of my hip bone every time I tried to draw a breath. But my mind was a razor. I watched Eleanor through half-lidded eyes as she scrambled backward, deliberately smearing a smear of my blood onto her own knee before the paramedics burst through the mahogany double doors.
"She slipped!" Eleanor sobbed, launching herself into the path of the lead paramedic with an Oscar-worthy performance. "She insisted on carrying the records down herself! I told her not to! I told her she was too far along!"
"Ma'am, step back," the paramedic barked, dropping a heavy medical kit with a thud.
I caught the eye of the second paramedic—a young woman with tired eyes and a name tag that read V. Ortiz. As she knelt beside me, her fingers immediately found my pulse, steady and professional, but her eyes flicked to my face with a sharp, assessing intelligence.
"Valerie," Ortiz said, her voice cutting through Eleanor's theatrical wailing. "Can you hear me? Squeeze my hand."
I squeezed. Weakly, but with enough force to communicate: I am here. I am awake. I am watching.
"She's bleeding out," Ortiz snapped over her shoulder. "Get the trauma board! Now! And call St. Jude’s—notify the OB-GYN on call that we have a catastrophic placental abruption risk. Move, people!"
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As they lifted me onto the board, the world tilted violently. Through the haze of pain, I locked eyes with the security camera on the landing. The little red light was still blinking. It had recorded everything: the shove, the calculated hesitation, the cruel whisper.
Eleanor thought she had secured her masterpiece. She didn't realize the canvas was about to catch fire.
