Chapter 4

4: 4

"You want a divorce over something this small?"

Irvin's face froze, then filled with irritation.

I held on to a single breath, my chest heaving, every word tearing at my throat.

"Small? When Nina was drowning, the word she cried was Daddy! Her one hope was that you'd come save her! If you'd been there, she never would have gone under!"

"The moment she went in, if your wristband had sounded the alarm, she could have been saved in time!"

"You! You said Nina didn't need it, and you turned around and gave the wristband to Ellie!"

"You were on the South Side teaching other people's kids about drowning, showing strangers how to keep their children alive, while your own daughter was drowning to death!"

"The baby in my belly is gone too! The child I protected so carefully for twenty-eight weeks went with Nina!"

"Irvin! You killed both your own children!"

I screamed the last words with every scrap of breath I had left. The wound seared, blood surged out again, and the world went dark in waves.

Irvin's whole body jerked to a stop, his pupils contracting, a flicker of panic crossing his eyes.

His lips parted to say something, but Ellie cut in first:

"How can you curse Nina like that? I just saw her playing in the hospital's childcare area. Are you... maybe you're remembering it wrong?"

Remembering it wrong?

How I wished I were remembering it wrong.

But I signed the surgical consent form with my own hand, and I confirmed the child's death notice with my own hand too.

Irvin clearly preferred to believe Ellie.

That thin trace of panic and hesitation in his eyes was swept clean away by her words.

"Enough, Ivy! It's just a wristband. Do you have to joke about a child's life? You're getting more and more impossible!"

He believed Ellie.

He would only ever believe Ellie.

My broken screaming, my hysteria, reached his ears as nothing but the emotional collapse and crazy talk of a pregnant woman.

I was tired.

The string in my chest, pulled tight for eight years, finally snapped.

"Think whatever you want."

"Sign it."

"If you don't sign, I'll file with the court and get a forced ruling."

At that, the tension in his face eased slightly.

He looked down at me, at my face white as paper, at my cracked, bloodless lips, and something like reluctance crept quietly into his eyes.

But before that reluctance could take shape, the wristband app's alarm blared out.

Not mine. Ellie's.

Her heart rate had spiked and triggered the alert. Every trace of feeling vanished from Irvin's face.

He scooped her up and rushed out of the ward without hesitation.

"Don't be scared. I'll get you to the ER."

He didn't look back at me once.

I watched him hurry away, and the tide in my eyes broke all over again.

If only my Nina could have been found a little sooner. How much better that would have been.

...

Inside the ER.

Irvin heard the doctor say, "It's just her emotions causing the heart-rate spike, nothing serious. She'll be fine with a little rest."

The dread that had been hanging over him crashed down and settled. He let out a long breath.

His eyes went to the wristband on Ellie's wrist, a hint of satisfaction in them:

"This wristband we developed really is sensitive enough. The accuracy holds up."

The words had barely left him when my raw, tearing screams rang back in his ears, and his heart skipped a beat.

"I really should get one for Nina. And arrange one for Ivy too. Late-term pregnancy carries a lot of risk."

He picked up his phone and told his assistant to prepare two of them.

He'd go home and apologize to Nina. He hadn't kept his promise to take her to the water park today.

Just as he finished and looked up, Irvin saw a nurse wheeling a small body toward the morgue.

"Such a shame. This drowned kid just came in from the water park. One minute sooner and she might have made it."

"Tell me about it. By the time the lifeguard got there, she was already gone."

"And the mother was pregnant. She slipped trying to save the child and hemorrhaged. In the end she lost both of them..."

His heart stopped for an instant, a knife of pain driving through it.

Ellie had just woken. Her fingers brushed the back of his hand:

"There's no way it's that much of a coincidence. It can't be Nina."

Irvin nodded stiffly, forcing himself not to let his mind run.

Then, without warning, the alarm at the nurses' station went off.

"Inpatient needs emergency staff, that new mother who just hemorrhaged, her name's... Ivy. Let's get up there, now."

The instant the two syllables of "Ivy" landed in his ears.

A ringing filled his head.

Irvin went rigid and cold all over, his pupils shaking violently.