CHAPTER 2 — BLEEDING IN SILK
1912 Words
CHAPTER 2 — BLEEDING IN SILK
The silence after Cole hung up felt louder than the ballroom.
I stared at my reflection in the black phone screen while blood spread beneath me across white marble floors in thin, branching rivers.
For one strange second, everything became painfully clear.
Not the diagnosis.
Not the danger.
Him.
I finally understood that if I died tonight, Cole would still finish his speech first.
The thought should have shattered me.
Instead, it hollowed something out.
Another violent cramp tore through my abdomen.
Pain folded my body inward so sharply my forehead hit the bathroom stall door behind me. A broken sound escaped my throat before I could stop it.
Warm blood flooded between my legs.
Too much.
My fingers slipped weakly against the marble floor as I tried to push myself upright.
The room tilted violently.
Breathe.
I needed to breathe.
But my lungs suddenly felt too small for panic.
The gold bathroom lights blurred overhead while nausea rolled through me in sickening waves. My hands shook uncontrollably. Cold sweat gathered beneath my hairline.
Somewhere beyond the restroom doors, people were applauding.
Laughing.
Living.
My body was shutting down less than fifty feet away from a ballroom serving imported champagne.
I tried standing again.
My knees buckled instantly.
The impact jarred pain through my stomach hard enough to steal sound from my throat.
A faint ringing filled my ears.
The marble beneath my palms looked impossibly white against the blood.
Beautiful.
Expensive.
Sterile.
Like every other part of my marriage.
The restroom door finally opened.
For a moment, nobody moved.
Three women stood frozen near the entrance in jeweled gowns worth more than most people’s yearly salaries. One of them covered her mouth.
Another looked irritated.
As though my suffering had interrupted something important.
“Oh my God,” someone whispered.
But quietly.
Carefully.
The way people react to tragedy when they don’t want to get emotionally involved.
I wanted to laugh.
Wealth teaches people how to witness suffering without touching it.
“Mrs. Ashbourne?”
The voice sounded far away.
I blinked slowly toward a blurry figure kneeling beside me.
My lips barely moved.
“I need an ambulance.”
The woman hesitated before pulling out her phone.
Hesitated.
Because even emergencies become social calculations in rooms like these.
Then darkness surged violently through my vision.
The next several minutes fractured apart inside my memory.
Hands touching me.
Voices overlapping.
Someone saying there was too much blood.
The sharp smell of perfume and panic.
Camera flashes bursting somewhere nearby.
I remember being lifted onto a stretcher while silk clung wetly to my skin.
I remember staring at the ballroom ceiling lights sliding above me like distant stars.
And I remember my phone vibrating beside my blood-covered hand.
Cole.
Hope exploded inside me so painfully it almost hurt worse than the cramps.
I answered immediately.
“Cole—”
“You caused a scene.”
The words landed harder than the pain.
Around me, paramedics adjusted oxygen tubing while guests whispered behind raised phones.
I stared upward numbly.
“I’m going to the hospital,” I whispered.
“You couldn’t wait twenty minutes?”
Twenty minutes.
My brain struggled to process the sentence.
As though I had misunderstood the language itself.
A paramedic pressed gauze harder against my abdomen and I gasped sharply.
“You hung up on me,” I said weakly.
Cole exhaled impatiently.
“You said you were bleeding, June. Not dying.”
The ambulance doors slammed shut.
Rain hammered instantly against the roof above us.
Sirens erupted through the night.
And still—
still—
his voice sounded inconvenienced instead of afraid.
Something inside my chest cracked open completely.
A sob clawed violently up my throat before I swallowed it down.
“I’m scared.”
The confession came out embarrassingly small.
For one brief second, silence filled the line.
Then Alycia laughed softly somewhere in the background.
Muted.
Intimate.
Close enough to touch him.
I closed my eyes.
That sound hurt more than anything else.
More than the blood.
More than the cramps.
Because suddenly I could see them clearly in my mind.
Her hand on his arm.
His head bent toward hers.
The warmth in his voice reserved for someone else.
While I bled through my dress alone.
Cole lowered his voice slightly.
“We’ll talk later.”
“No,” I whispered immediately. “Please—”
The line disconnected.
I stared numbly at the darkened screen until a paramedic gently removed the phone from my hand.
“You need to stay awake for me, okay?”
I turned my face toward the ambulance ceiling.
Rain streaked across the windows beside me while city lights smeared into abstract colors beyond the glass.
Blood soaked through the blanket beneath my body.
Everything hurt.
But beneath the terror and pain, another feeling was beginning to spread slowly through me.
Coldness.
Because the man I loved knew I was losing our child—
and still chose another woman’s applause instead.
Tears slid silently into my hairline.
I didn’t wipe them away.
The paramedics spoke urgently around me.
“Blood pressure dropping.”
“She’s tachycardic.”
“We need trauma prepped now.”
Their voices faded in and out beneath the ringing in my ears.
Pain arrived in waves now.
Sharp.
Blinding.
Then distant.
Then sharp again.
I drifted somewhere between consciousness and memory.
The nursery curtains were still folded inside their packaging.
I never hung them because I was afraid.
Afraid if I touched the room too soon, something would go wrong again.
I remembered standing inside that nursery three weeks earlier with one hand against my stomach while Cole answered emails beside the doorway.
“Do you think it’s too early to buy a crib?” I had asked quietly.
He never looked up from his phone.
“Whatever you want, June.”
Whatever you want.
Not: What do you want?
Not: Are you happy?
I used to mistake indifference for gentleness because the alternative hurt too much.
Another contraction of agony ripped through me.
I cried out this time.
A paramedic squeezed my shoulder firmly.
“Stay with us.”
The ambulance blurred around me.
Red lights.
Rain.
Oxygen.
The metallic smell of blood.
I suddenly remembered a tiny pair of socks hidden inside my bedside drawer at home.
Cream-colored.
Ridiculously small.
I bought them after our twelve-week appointment because for one reckless moment, I thought maybe this pregnancy would survive.
Maybe we would survive too.
The thought nearly destroyed me.
By the time we reached St. Celeste, I could barely feel my hands.
The emergency room doors burst open.
Everything became noise.
Fluorescent lights burned overhead while doctors surrounded the stretcher immediately.
Questions collided around me.
“How long has she been bleeding?”
“Blood pressure?”
“Possible rupture?”
Scissors sliced through silk near my legs.
Cold air struck my skin.
I flinched weakly.
“Possible ruptured ectopic pregnancy,” someone said.
The phrase drifted through the chaos like smoke.
My heartbeat became erratic.
No.
No, no—
I grabbed blindly for a nurse’s wrist.
“My husband…”
“We’ll contact him,” she assured gently.
I almost laughed.
The sound nearly became hysterical.
No.
They wouldn’t need to contact him.
He already knew.
The hallway lights streaked above me as they rushed me deeper into the hospital.
White ceilings.
Latex gloves.
The sharp antiseptic sting of surgical disinfectant.
Machines beeped relentlessly somewhere nearby.
Pain blurred reality itself.
“We need to operate now.”
Operate.
Fear surged violently through me.
“What about the baby?”
Nobody answered immediately.
And that silence terrified me more than anything else.
A mask lowered over my face.
“Count backward for me, June.”
My eyes burned instantly.
I thought of unopened nursery curtains.
Tiny socks.
Cole once pressing an absentminded kiss against my stomach six weeks ago while half-asleep.
The only time he ever touched the baby voluntarily.
I wondered suddenly if the baby ever heard my voice.
If it knew I loved it.
If it knew I tried.
Then everything dissolved into white light.
When I woke up, the world smelled like antiseptic and grief.
For several long seconds, I couldn’t understand where I was.
The room was dim except for soft monitor lights blinking beside the bed.
Rain tapped quietly against distant windows.
Then pain returned.
Deep.
Surgical.
Wrong.
My hand moved instinctively toward my stomach.
Flat.
Empty.
A sound escaped my throat.
Not quite a sob.
Something smaller.
More broken.
A nurse looked up immediately from nearby charts and approached carefully.
“You’re awake.”
My throat felt scraped raw.
“The baby?”
Silence answered first.
And silence can be crueler than truth.
The nurse’s face softened professionally.
“I’m so sorry.”
The room tilted violently.
“No…”
“You had a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. There was severe internal bleeding.”
I shook my head weakly.
“No, no, no—”
“We had to operate quickly.”
Operate.
The word echoed strangely inside my skull.
My body understood before my mind did.
Something was missing.
Something irreversible.
“We removed your left fallopian tube.”
I stopped breathing.
The nurse continued explaining complications and recovery plans, but the words dissolved beneath roaring static inside my ears.
Future fertility concerns.
Significant blood loss.
Lucky to survive.
Lucky.
The word lodged like broken glass inside my chest.
Because survival suddenly felt unbearably cruel.
I turned my face toward the wall as tears slid silently into my hair.
Nobody held my hand.
Nobody told me it would be okay.
And the only person I still wanted—
the only stupid person I still wanted—
wasn’t there.
Hours passed.
Maybe longer.
Time became monitor beeps and changing nurses and darkness thickening outside the windows.
Every time footsteps approached the door, my chest tightened instinctively.
Every time it wasn’t Cole, something inside me sank deeper.
I hated myself for continuing to hope.
Eventually I reached for my phone with trembling fingers.
Thousands of notifications flooded the screen immediately.
News alerts.
Messages.
Media clips.
Then I saw it.
Cole standing beside Alycia onstage.
Smiling.
While I was in surgery.
The headline beneath the photo read:
ASHBOURNE BIOTECH ANNOUNCES HISTORIC $10 MILLION INVESTMENT INTO WOMEN’S FERTILITY RESEARCH
I stared at the image until nausea rolled through me again.
His hand rested lightly against Alycia’s back.
Protective.
Possessive.
The kind of touch he hadn’t used on me in years.
Another article loaded beneath it.
Featuring Alycia alone this time.
I almost scrolled past.
Then certain terminology caught my attention.
Cellular implantation stabilization.
Hormonal receptor adaptation.
My pulse slowed strangely.
I knew those phrases.
Not vaguely.
Exactly.
Because I wrote them.
Years ago.
Under an alias buried beneath shell companies and private research holdings nobody connected to me anymore.
I reread the article twice.
Three times.
Coldness slowly slid beneath my grief.
No.
That wasn’t possible.
Unless—
The hospital room door opened.
Cole walked inside smelling like expensive scotch, rainwater—
and another woman’s perfume.
His tie hung loosened around his collar. Exhaustion shadowed his face.
But not grief.
Never grief.
He looked at me lying in the hospital bed for several long seconds.
No panic.
No apology.
No horror over almost losing me.
Just irritation buried beneath fatigue.
Then he sighed quietly and said:
“You look awful.”
Something inside me shattered completely.
- Writer
