“What did you just say?” I managed to ask.
“You heard me,” he snapped. “Do you have any idea how much your mother’s shopping trip cost me? Six hundred dollars for a handbag. And now you’re piling on hospital bills because you couldn’t wait a few hours.”
Something inside me finally broke. Maybe it was the pain. Maybe it was fear. Maybe it was three years of swallowing my words catching up to me.
“Greedy,” I shot back. “You’re the greediest, most selfish—”
He moved before I could finish. His hand shot out, gripping a fistful of my hair and jerking my head back. The slap rang through the room, loud and vicious. Bright flashes burst across my vision.
“Travis, stop!” Lauren shouted from somewhere behind him. But he wasn’t done. His face twisted with rage as he pulled back his fist and slammed it into my pregnant stomach.
The pain was beyond anything I had felt—worse than the contractions. I screamed. The monitors erupted in frantic alarms.
“Code blue! Code blue!” someone yelled.
Everything after that felt like a fast-forwarded film. Security tackled Travis to the floor. Dr. Patterson barked instructions. Deborah screamed about lawsuits and “family reputation.” Lauren was on her phone—I caught the words “police” and “assault.” Then darkness swallowed me.
I woke up in recovery two days later, the sharp scent of antiseptic filling my nose. For a moment, I didn’t know where I was—or why my body felt shattered. Then memory rushed back. My hands flew to my stomach—flat and empty.
