Chapter 2 - First Responders(Approx. 1,800 words)
The sound of heavy boots pounding up the carpeted staircase echoed through the house less than ninety seconds after Patrick reached the front door.
Eleanor was still standing over me in the bathroom, her face flushed with a terrifying mix of fury and embarrassment. She frantically tried to wipe the blood off the bathroom mirror frame with a towel, attempting to destroy the physical evidence before the paramedics reached the second floor.
"Get up, Clara!" Eleanor hissed under her breath, grabbing my shoulder roughly. "Sit on the bed! Pretend you fell! If you tell those officers I touched you, I swear to God I will make sure Patrick sues you for full custody the moment that baby is born!"
I pulled my shoulder away from her grip, my voice barely above a whisper but sharp as glass. "Don't touch me again."
Two paramedics burst into the master suite, flanked by two armed city police officers.
The lead paramedic, a tall woman with her hair pulled back into a tight bun, immediately took in the scene: me slumping against the counter, holding my bleeding face and stomach, the severed maternity band on the floor, and Eleanor holding a stained hand towel.
"Ma'am, step away from her right now!" the senior officer commanded, stepping firmly between Eleanor and me.
"I am her mother-in-law! This is my house!" Eleanor shrieked, waving her arms dramatically. "She had a hysterical episode! She fell into the mirror during a panic attack! My son and I were just trying to keep her calm!"
"I said step back, ma'am!" the officer repeated, his hand resting on his holster as he forced Eleanor out into the hallway, where Patrick was standing against the wall, shaking violently.
The female paramedic knelt beside me, her eyes kind and intensely focused. "My name is Sarah. I’m a paramedic. You're safe now, Clara. We've got you."
"My baby..." I sobbed, the emotional wall I had built up over the last four hours completely collapsing as real help finally arrived. "I'm thirty-four weeks... I'm high-risk... my blood pressure..."
"I know, honey. The dispatcher gave us your medical file," Sarah said softly, placing a blood pressure cuff around my right arm while her partner opened a heavy medical kit. "Let's get you checked out."
As Sarah checked my vitals, her partner examined the laceration on my cheek.
"Deep cut over the cheekbone, likely needs stitches," the secondary paramedic noted aloud for the police officer’s notepad. "And look at this fabric." He picked up the severed maternity support band using a pair of sterile gloves. "This was cut with shears while she was wearing it. There are friction burns on the waistband of her nightgown."
Outside in the hallway, Eleanor's raised voice carried through the doorway.
"This is an outrage! My son is a senior executive at Halston Financial! You cannot speak to us like this in our own home! My daughter-in-law is mentally unstable—she's been having prenatal psychosis for months!"
"Ma'am," the officer’s voice was stone-cold outside. "The dispatcher recorded forty-five minutes of continuous audio through the smart speaker system inside that room. We have clear audio of you screaming threats, the sound of physical impact, and your repeated cancellation of 911 calls while the patient was audibly in distress."
I looked at Sarah as she placed an oxygen mask gently over my face. "My phone..." I whispered through the mask. "They locked my phone in the hall cabinet."
Sarah turned toward the doorway. "Officer, the patient states her communication device was confiscated and locked away by the family."
Within ten seconds, the secondary officer walked into the hall cabinet, used a small crowbar tool from his belt, and popped the thin wooden latch open. He walked back into the room holding my smartphone, sliding it into a clear evidence bag.
"We have your phone, ma'am," the officer said to me. "And we have the audio logs. An evidence team is on their way to secure the smart speaker unit as well."
They carefully lifted me onto a portable stretcher. As they wheeled me out of the master bedroom and down the hallway, I saw Patrick.
He was sitting on the top stair, his head buried in his hands. He looked up as the stretcher rolled past him.
"Clara..." he stuttered, his voice choked with pathetic emotion. "Clara, I'm sorry... I didn't think she'd actually hit you... I thought you guys were just arguing..."
I didn't say a word. I didn't even look at his eyes. I looked straight ahead at the front door, where the flashing red and blue lights of the emergency vehicles illuminated the darkness outside.
Eleanor was standing near the front entry, currently being placed in heavy iron handcuffs by two additional police officers.
"Patrick!" Eleanor screamed as the metal clinked around her wrists. "Call Richard! Call our attorney right now! Tell him this ungrateful bitch staged the whole thing!"
"You have the right to remain silent," the arresting officer declared loudly over her screeching. "Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law."
As the paramedics loaded my stretcher into the back of the warm, sterile ambulance, Sarah squeezed my hand. "You're doing great, Clara. We're ten minutes from Saint Jude’s. The OB team is already waiting for us in the trauma bay."
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I looked out the rear windows of the ambulance as the doors slammed shut. Through the glass, I watched my husband standing alone on the driveway in his socks, watching his mother get pushed into the back of a police cruiser while his pregnant wife was sped away into the night.
The sirens wailed, and for the first time in nine months, I took a deep, clean breath of air.
