Chapter 6 - The Long Night
Three days passed.
Adrian never left St. Catherine Medical Center. He had a small cot brought into Elena’s private ICU room, but he rarely slept on it.
He spent the hours sitting in a chair beside her bed, holding her left hand. The small pearl polish on her nails was chipped now, but he didn't care. He held her hand gently, avoiding the IV line inserted into her wrist, resting his cheek against her knuckles.
He washed her face with a warm cloth every morning. He read aloud to her from the books she kept on her nightstand at home—poetry and historical biographies he had always dismissed as boring. He spoke to her in quiet, desperate whispers during the quietest hours of the night.
“I was blind, Elena,” he whispered at three in the morning, his voice thick with tears. “I thought your silence was coldness. I thought your composure meant you didn't care. I was so full of my own ego that I couldn't see you were holding our entire world together while I was tearing it down.”
He kissed her cool knuckles.
“I put Madison on the street. I destroyed Julian. I’m cleaning up the company... everything you wanted me to be, I’m doing it now. Just open your eyes. Please. Punish me, yell at me, divorce me if you have to... but don't leave me alone in this dark.”
The monitors chimed rhythmically in the background.
On the fourth morning, the chief doctor walked into the room, holding a clipboard. He checked the telemetry monitors and performed a quick reflex test on Elena’s eyelids.
“How is she?” Adrian asked instantly, jumping to his feet.
“Her brain activity is increasing,” the doctor said, smiling faintly. “The swelling in her brain has receded significantly, and her vital signs are stable. We’re reducing the sedation meds now, Mr. Vale. She should be waking up within the next few hours.”
Adrian felt a wave of relief so intense that he had to grip the edge of the bed to stay upright. “And the baby?”
The doctor adjusted the ultrasound monitor beside the bed, applying gel to Elena’s stomach and placing the wand down. A loud, fast, rhythmic sound filled the quiet room—like the frantic galloping of a tiny horse.
Thump-thump-thump-thump.
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“Strong beat,” the doctor said softly. “Your baby girl is a fighter, Mr. Vale. Just like her mother.”
Adrian buried his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking as heavy, silent tears finally poured from his eyes. For the first time in his life, he didn't care who saw him cry.
