Chapter 6 - The Labor in the Storm
Three days later, a massive thunderstorm rolled over the city of Dallas. Heavy rain slammed against the high-rise glass windows of St. Catherine’s Medical Center, lightning flashing across the dark gray sky.
Inside the presidential suite, the storm outside was matched by the storm in my body.
At 4:00 AM, sharp, intense contractions began radiating through my lower back. The trauma and stress of the hospital hallway incident had triggered early labor. I was thirty-six weeks pregnant.
"Breathe, Emily, breathe," Uncle Arthur murmured, holding my left hand while a team of three nurses and Dr. Harrison prepared the delivery room.
"She’s fully dilated to eight centimeters," Dr. Harrison announced, checking the monitor. "The baby is positioned well, but we need to move her to the private delivery wing right now."
While I was being wheeled down the secure hallway toward the delivery suite, a commotion broke out at the double glass doors of the ninth-floor elevator bank.
Preston Hartwell was standing behind the reinforced glass partition, drenched in rain, wearing a rumpled, stained suit. He looked like a madman. His bail had been posted two hours earlier by his family's trust after he liquidated his personal sports car collection, and he had rushed straight to the hospital.
"Emily!" Preston screamed through the glass, slamming his palms against the door. "Emily! I know you're in labor! Let me in! That's my daughter being born! I have a legal right to be in that room!"
Four heavy hospital security officers stepped up to the glass partition, blocking his view.
"Mr. Hartwell," the head of security warned over the intercom system. "You are under a temporary restraining order issued by the Cook County District Court. If you take one more step toward these doors, we will execute an immediate arrest for violation of a protection order."
"I don't care about the order!" Preston yelled, his face contorted in frantic, ugly desperation. Flashes from news cameras echoed down the hallway—reporters had followed his car from the jailhouse straight to the hospital parking lot. "She’s my wife! That’s my baby! Emily, tell them to let me in!"
I stopped my wheelchair for a brief second. I turned my head and looked through the glass partition at the man I had once believed was my entire world.
He looked small. He looked pitiful. He looked like a boy who had broken his favorite toy and was now screaming because he wasn't allowed to play with it anymore.
I didn't say a single word. I simply turned my head back toward the delivery room doors and let the nurses guide me through.
An hour later, at 5:22 AM, a sharp, loud, magnificent cry echoed through the quiet delivery room.
"It’s a girl!" Dr. Harrison announced, holding up a slippery, beautiful, pink baby girl with a thick tuft of dark hair and bright, alert dark eyes.
They laid her gently against my bare chest.
I looked down at her tiny, perfect face, her small fingers curling tightly around my index finger. All the pain, all the humiliation, all the cold nights in that empty mansion vanished into thin air.
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"Welcome to the world, Lily," I whispered, kissing her soft forehead, tears of pure, unadulterated joy running down my cheeks. "You are safe now. Nobody is ever going to hurt us again."
Uncle Arthur stood by my bed, his eyes overflowing with tears as he looked down at his grand-niece. "She’s beautiful, Emily. She looks just like your mother."
