They’d been carrying his children at the same time.
“Andrew,” Samantha’s voice was barely a whisper. “Why? Why is she here?”
Andrew glanced at Jennifer, then back at his wife.
“She’s here to support me, Samantha. This is hard for me, too.”
Hard for him.
Hard for him.
Samantha was bleeding out on a table, and it was hard for him.
“She’s pregnant,” Samantha could barely form the words. “You got her pregnant. While I was—”
Jennifer let out a nervous laugh. High-pitched. Uncomfortable.
“This is awkward.”
That laugh—that single sound—would echo through the next sixteen years like a curse.
It was the last thing Samantha heard clearly besides the machines beeping faster and faster.
She tried to reach for Andrew, tried to make him understand, tried to beg him to love their daughter the way she couldn’t stay to love her.
But he’d already turned away.
He was watching Jennifer, not her.
In the corner, Nurse Patricia stood frozen.
She was sixty-two years old. She’d worked in labor and delivery for thirty years. She’d seen complicated births, grieving families, impossible choices—but she’d never seen this.
A husband bringing his pregnant mistress to watch his wife die.
Her hand moved to her scrub pocket where her phone sat.
She pulled it out slowly, carefully pointed it toward the bed, and pressed record.
What she captured in the next eight minutes would wait sixteen years to surface.
But when it did, it would destroy everything.
Samantha’s monitors were screaming now.
The doctor was shouting for more blood, more hands, more time.
But time was the one thing Samantha didn’t have.
She looked at the nurse.
Patricia, her name tag said.
“Patricia… please,” Samantha whispered. “Please record this.”
