His to Keep

Chapter 3: The aftermath

Praise POV

I opened my eyes slowly, my eyelids feeling impossibly heavy, as if weights had been attached to them. Everything was so white that for a moment I thought perhaps I had finally gotten my wish. The figure standing above me was dressed entirely in white, his features soft and kind, almost ethereal in the fluorescent lighting that blinded my sight. Maybe I was in heaven after all.

“Ma’am, can you hear me?”

The voice cut through the fog in my mind, concerned and very much human.

“Ma’am, can you hear me? Please, if you can understand me, try to respond.”

Those voices were definitely human, too real to belong to angels welcoming me to paradise.

Don’t tell me I’m alive. Please don’t. A wave of despair so intense crashed over me, and I squeezed my eyes shut tightly, wishing to pull myself back into unconsciousness, back into that peaceful darkness where I didn’t have to remember, didn’t have to feel, didn’t have to face whatever came next. I wished desperately to die, to slip away into nothingness where betrayal and heartbreak couldn’t touch me.

But then came a gentle tap on my shoulder, persistent and impossible to ignore. Reluctantly, I opened my eyes again and let reality come into focus. I was in a hospital room, that much was obvious from the sterile smell of disinfectant, the steady beep of monitors, and the industrial white walls that seemed to press in from all sides.

How did I even end up here? The last thing I remembered clearly was driving, crying, the world spinning around me, and then the crash.

I tried to sit up, driven by some instinctive need to assess my situation, to take control of something in my shattered life. But as soon as I moved, pain lanced through my body and I realized I was connected to what seemed like a dozen different tubes and injections. IV lines snaked from both arms, monitors were clipped to my fingers, and I could feel the pull of something taped to my chest beneath the thin hospital gown. Two nurses rushed to my side immediately, their hands gentle but firm as they helped ease me into a more upright position, adjusting pillows behind my back with practiced efficiency.

“Take it easy,” one of them murmured.

“You’ve been through quite an ordeal.”

My throat was painfully dry, my voice coming out as barely more than a raspy whisper. “How long have I been like this?”

The doctor, the man in white I had mistaken for an angel, stepped closer, his expression professionally sympathetic. He was older, maybe in his fifties, with kind eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses.

“Ma’am, you’ve been unconscious for three days. You were in a very serious accident. You’re lucky to be alive.”

“Three days.” The words echoed in my mind. Three entire days had passed while I lay here, and the world had kept turning without me.

“And…” I swallowed hard, trying to work moisture into my mouth. “Did anyone… Did my family call? My husband?”

Something flickered across the doctor’s face. Was it pity? He exchanged a quick glance with one of the nurses before responding.

“No, ma’am. None of your relatives have called to check on you.”

The words hit me harder than the vehicle that had crashed into me.

Three days and Joe hadn’t bothered to reach out? Three days without me, and he hadn’t called the hospitals, hadn’t filed a missing person report, hadn’t even cared enough to wonder where I was?

“However,” the doctor continued, his tone carefully neutral, “your co-workers did contact us after you didn’t show up for work. We explained your current situation to them, and they were very concerned. They’ve sent their wishes for a safe recovery and instructed that you are permitted to return to work only when you’re fully recovered. They’ve been very understanding.”

My co-workers. People I barely knew beyond our daily interactions at the office had shown more concern for my wellbeing than my own husband. More concern than my own sister.

Tears began to roll down my cheeks, hot and bitter, carving paths down skin that felt papery and strange. Three days, and Kiara hadn’t reached out either. My baby sister, the girl I had raised, the girl I had sacrificed everything for, she couldn’t even pick up a phone to see if I was alive or dead after I had caught her in bed with my husband. Maybe she hoped I was dead. Maybe they both did. Maybe they were at home right now, in my bed, celebrating my disappearance, planning a future together without the inconvenient wife and sister in the way.

The thoughts were poison, each one more toxic than the last, and I could feel them spreading through my system worse than any infection.

Why exactly was I alive then? What cruel twist of fate had saved me when all I wanted was to escape? The plan had been so simple. Meet Mom and Dad wherever they were, and finally be free of this pain, to rest. But even that had been taken from me.

Then, like lightning splitting through a dark sky, a thought struck me with such force that I gasped aloud.

“My baby!” I shouted, my voice suddenly strong, powered by a terror so absolute it overrode every ache in my body. My hands flew to my stomach, searching desperately for any sign, any hope. “My baby, where’s my baby?”

The room went very quiet. The nurses looked away. The doctor’s face crumpled with genuine sorrow, and I knew before he even opened his mouth what he was going to say.

“I am so, so sorry to tell you this,” he began, his voice heavy with the weight of delivering the worst possible news. “But we lost him. The accident was extremely severe. You suffered massive trauma, and you had a miscarriage at the scene. We tried everything we could. But we couldn’t save your baby. I’m truly sorry.”

The world stopped. Everything, the beeping monitors, the whispered voices of the nurses, the sound of footsteps in the hallway outside, all of it faded into a high-pitched ringing in my ears.

My baby. The tiny life I had been so excited about just four days ago. The miracle I had waited five years for. The surprise that was supposed to change everything, to make all the pain worthwhile, was gone.

Something inside me shattered completely in that moment, some final thread that had been holding the broken pieces of me together. I felt it snap, and suddenly I wasn’t a person anymore. I was just rage and grief and unbearable, unsurvivable pain.

My hands moved of their own accord, ripping violently at the IV lines in my arms. I felt the sting as needles tore free from my skin, saw blood begin to well up from the puncture wounds, but I didn’t care. I yanked at the monitor cables, tore at the tubes, desperate to free myself from everything tethering me to this life I no longer wanted.

The nurses lunged toward me, their voices rising in alarm. “Ma’am, please! You need to calm down!”

“Stop! You’re going to hurt yourself!”

But I was already standing, though my legs shook violently beneath me and pain radiated through every cell of my body. I must have looked like a maniac, wild-eyed, bloody, hospital gown hanging off one shoulder, stumbling and swaying on legs that hadn’t been used in three days.

“Let me go!” I screamed, my voice raw and inhuman. “Let me die! I want to die!”

They tried to hold me down, multiple pairs of hands grabbing at my arms, my shoulders, trying to guide me back to the bed. But all I wanted was to die, to escape this nightmare, to join my baby wherever lost souls went. I had lost everything: my husband, my sister, my child, my reason for living.

I screamed and screamed, the sound tearing from my throat until it felt like I was shredding my vocal cords. I screamed for my baby, for my broken marriage, for my shattered trust, for the life I thought I had and the future that had been stolen from me. I screamed until there was no breath left in my lungs, until the room started to spin again and darkness crept in from the edges of my vision.

The last thing I remembered was the doctor’s voice, calm and professional, ordering sedation.

George POV

I stood by the side of the door watching with teary eyes. It shouldn’t have gone like this. It really shouldn’t.

“I’m so sorry, Praise,” I whispered, hoping she’d hear me from within.

“She’s asleep now, sir,” Doctor Alex reported to me.

“Good. Now tell the nurses to leave,” I ordered.

“Yes, sir,” he said and returned inside.

The nurses hurried out immediately, fear written on their faces.

I entered the room and sat beside her, watching her beautiful face, tender from crying. Slowly, I lifted my hand and rested it against her head, my thumb brushing softly along her temple.

“The baby had to go for us to be together. I can’t imagine you carrying another man’s child. We would be happy after this, make our own children together and live happily. You just have to endure this pain for the happiness to come.”

Tears rolled down my cheeks as the words escaped slowly.

“You would be so happy to see me after all these years and would forget about Joe,” I said as a tear dropped onto her face from mine.

“But you broke me, Praise. You told me that you couldn’t marry into poverty because you came from a poor background. You never saw me all those years because I was a scholarship student. When I got expelled, I thought that if I finally made something of my life and came back, you’d finally see me. But before I could return, you got married to a poor man, a man that is still building a business and probably his life. Is that fair?”

She stirred and I quickly withdrew my hand, wiping the tears from my face.

“Joe, our baby is gone. Joe…” the words escaped her mouth weakly.

I stood up immediately. “You really love him. But if I can’t have you, then no one will,” I said and left the room.

“Alex! Alex!” I called. He came running a few minutes later.

“Must I holler before you come?” I asked, trying hard to control my boiling anger.

“I’m so sorry, sir,” he pleaded.

“Go check on her. She is talking in her sleep,” I said.

“Yes, sir,” he said and bolted inside the room.

I observed his disappearing figure for a while before I made my way out of the hospital.