“You look just like her,” Silas rasped, his voice sounding like gravel grinding against wet pavement.
“Who?” I demanded, the word tearing from my throat as a massive contraction hit. It was an oceanic wave of agony that cut off my breath, forcing a primal, guttural scream from my lips. I curled into a ball on the back seat, my fingernails biting so deeply into my palms I felt blood.
Stranger danger. Run. Get out. The warnings screamed in my head, a frantic chorus fighting against the sheer, paralyzing biology of childbirth. I was trapped. I was too weak, too heavy, too consumed by the tearing in my pelvis to jump out of a moving vehicle.
Silas didn’t offer a word of comfort. He didn’t ask how far apart the contractions were. He simply turned his dark eyes back to the wet road and accelerated, the engine roaring in protest. He blew through a solid red light at an empty intersection, the tires hissing against the asphalt.
When we finally skidded under the glowing red awning of the Mercy Hospital emergency room, he didn’t throw the car into park. He didn’t ask for the fare. He unlocked the doors with a sharp click.
I practically fell out of the cab, my knees buckling as my feet hit the wet concrete. I leaned against the cold metal of the car, gasping for air, waiting for him to speed away.
He didn’t.
He pulled the taxi slowly into a designated parking spot just beyond the ambulance bay. As I limped toward the glowing sliding doors, leaning heavily on a passing orderly who rushed out to catch me, I forced myself to look back.
Silas was standing by the hospital’s glass entrance. His silhouette was dark and imposing against the halo of the streetlights. He wasn’t moving. He was just standing there in the rain, holding a small, weathered photograph in his hand, his thumb tracing the edges.
The Labor and Delivery ward was a sterile, lonely purgatory. The air smelled of iodine, bleach, and fear. The nurses moved with the hurried, indifferent efficiency of people who had seen a hundred miracles and a hundred tragedies before their coffee breaks. To them, I was just another “unaccompanied minor” in Room 4B.
I lay in the center of the bed, the thin hospital gown offering no warmth. The rhythmic, electronic beep of the fetal monitor was the only companion I had in the suffocating silence. A cold IV dripped fluids into the back of my bruised hand. I was terrified of the birth, terrified of my body splitting apart, but underneath that biological fear was a sharper, colder dread.
Every time the heavy wooden door to my room creaked open, my heart slammed against my ribs. I expected to see Silas. I expected to see the scarred neck and those hollow, predatory eyes stepping into the fluorescent light.
Nurse Sarah, a woman with kind eyes but exhausted shoulders, bustled in to check my dilation. She adjusted my oxygen mask, offering a tight, sympathetic smile.
“Your ride is still out there, honey,” she said casually, checking the monitors. “He told the front desk he’s not leaving until he knows you’re both okay. He’s a bit rough around the edges, but it’s sweet that he stayed.”
The monitor beside my bed instantly spiked. My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic bird trapped in a cage, beating faster than the rapid flutter of the baby’s heartbeat.
“He’s not my father,” I whispered, the words trembling on my lips. But before I could explain, another wave of absolute agony crashed over me, drowning out my voice in a desperate wail.
He hadn’t just dropped me off. The realization settled like lead in my stomach. He had checked in. He was tracking me.
As the final, brutal stage of labor began, the physical pain became a blur. The only thing tethering me to consciousness, the only thing keeping me pushing through the blood and the sweat and the tearing, was the primal, desperate need to protect the child I was about to bring into a world where we were actively being hunted.
With one final, earth-shattering push, the pressure released. A sharp, piercing cry echoed off the sterile tile walls.
“It’s a girl,” Nurse Sarah announced, placing a small, slippery, perfect weight onto my bare chest.