The doctor was barking orders, but Samantha’s vision was already tunneling, going dark at the edges, like someone was slowly closing curtains around her life.
And through it all—through the chaos and the terror and the pain—she heard Andrew ask one question. Just one.
“Is the baby okay?”
Not “Is my wife okay?”
Not “Save her. Please, God, save her.”
Just concern for the baby.
The baby he’d probably already decided would be raised by Jennifer anyway.
They pulled her daughter from her body.
Samantha heard the cry—that first beautiful cry—and she used every ounce of strength she had left to lift her head.
“Let me… let me hold her, please.”
The nurse brought the baby to her—warm weight against her chest, tiny fingers. A face so perfect it made Samantha’s heart shatter and heal at the same time.
She had forty-seven seconds.
She counted them later in whatever place people go between life and death.
Forty-seven seconds to memorize her daughter’s face.
To smell that newborn smell.
To whisper, “I love you. I love you so much. Mommy’s here. Mommy fought so hard to meet you.”
Then the doctors needed to work.
They took the baby away.
And that’s when Samantha looked up and saw her.
Jennifer—standing in the corner, wearing scrubs like she belonged there.
But Samantha knew that face.
She’d seen it in photos on Andrew’s phone that he thought he’d deleted.
She’d smelled that perfume on his shirts.
And now she was here, in this room, watching Samantha die.
Jennifer’s hand rested on her own belly.
Five months pregnant. Maybe six.
The timeline crashed into Samantha’s fading consciousness like a freight train.
He’d gotten his mistress pregnant while Samantha was pregnant.
