Chapter 4: Bad Luck

The words echoed inside me, hollow and final. I couldn't breathe, couldn't move. Adrian's arm around my shoulders felt like the only thing keeping me tethered to the ground.

"No," I whispered. "No, that's not, he was strong. You said there was a chance."

The surgeon's face remained kind, which made it unbearable. "The injuries were too extensive. His body couldn't sustain the trauma. I'm truly sorry."

Adrian pulled me against his chest. I heard him say something to the surgeon, but the words were muffled, underwater. Everything was underwater now, everything was sinking.

"My mother," I said suddenly, pulling back. "I need to see my mother. She needs to know. She needs—"

"Elena, wait." Adrian caught my hand. "Let me come with you."

But I was already moving. My legs carried me down hallways I didn't remember, past nurses in blue scrubs whose faces blurred together. My father was dead. My father was gone. The words kept repeating, refusing to settle into something I could understand.

My mother was still in her room, still fighting for life.

I pushed through the door and found her awake, her eyes tracking mine as I entered. For a moment, I couldn't speak, I couldn't tell her what had just happened.

"Elena, I haven't seen your dad?" she said, her voice breaking. It wasn't a question. “Have you seen him? I want to see him.”

Now, I believed she had the feeling that something had gone wrong.

My knees gave way, and I sank into the nearest chair. My chest ached with every breath. “Mum…” I wiped at my face, only smearing the tears. “Dad is dead.” The next words came out as a whisper. “Your husband is no more.”

"The doctors did everything they could," I said, the words tasting like poison. "Mum, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."

I moved to her bedside, taking her right hand carefully. Her skin was papery, fragile. She looked smaller than she had three days ago. Smaller, older and terrified.

The colour drained from her face. She shook her head over and over as if refusing to accept what she had heard.

"Oh God." The words tore from her throat. "My husband, my husband, my husband.”

I dropped to my knees beside her bed and wrapped both hands around hers. My vision blurred, and I squeezed my eyes shut, but the tears kept coming.

"I'm sorry, Mum. I'm sorry.”

Adrian appeared in the doorway, his face ashen. He moved to my other side, his hand settling on my shoulder.

"Mrs. Whitmore," he said softly to my mother. "I'm so sorry about your husband."

My mother's eyes fixed on him for a long moment. Something passed across her face, recognition, fear, something I couldn't quite name. Then she closed her eyes and turned her face away.

I stayed beside her for hours. Adrian brought me tea I didn't drink, sat beside me in the uncomfortable chair, held my hand when I needed something to grip. The hospital moved around us, nurses checking monitors, doctors making rounds, the constant beeping of machines keeping count of heartbeats and breaths.

Around midnight, Adrian finally spoke.

"You should sleep," he said quietly. "I'll stay with you. But you need rest."

"I can't leave her."

"You're not leaving her. You're closing your eyes for a few hours. Elena, you're going to collapse if you don't rest."

I knew he was right. I was running on adrenaline and grief and the desperate need to keep moving because stopping meant facing what had happened. But my mother needed me awake. She needed me to be alert.

"Just for an hour," I said finally.

I dozed fitfully in the chair, my head against Adrian's shoulder. Every time a nurse entered the room, I jolted awake, my heart racing. Was it happening again? Was my mother's condition worsening?

By morning, she was stable. The doctors said if she made it through the next forty-eight hours, her chances would improve significantly.

Forty-eight hours. I could survive that. I could stay awake for forty-eight hours if it meant keeping her alive.

The second day was when Margaret arrived.

She swept into the hospital room wearing black, her face arranged in an expression of sympathy that didn't reach her eyes. Adrian stiffened beside me.

"Oh, Elena," Margaret said, moving toward me with arms open. "What a terrible tragedy. Your poor dad."

I let her embrace me because refusing seemed cruel, but I could feel the wrongness in it. Her touch was cold. Her perfume was overwhelming.

"Thank you for coming," I said, pulling away.

"Of course I came. Family must support family in times of crisis." She turned to look at my mother, who was sleeping. "How is she doing?"

"She's stable," I said.

Margaret's expression flickered just for a moment before the sympathy returned. "That's good news. Though I must say, you've had rather a lot of bad luck lately, haven't you? First the infertility, now this."

The words landed strangely. I looked at her, trying to understand what she meant.

"Bad luck happens to everyone," I said carefully.

"Does it?" Margaret moved to the window, looking out at the London skyline. "I've always believed that some people carry misfortune with them. Like a shadow that follows. Touching everything, everyone around them."

Adrian made a sound low in his throat, something between a cough and a warning.

"Mum, perhaps we should let my wife rest," he said.

But Margaret wasn't finished.

"I've known families like that," she continued, turning back to me. "Families where tragedy just seems to cluster. Where every decision leads to catastrophe. It's almost like the universe is trying to tell them something."

"I don't understand what you're trying to say," I said, my voice tight.

"Don't you?" She smiled, and it was the coldest smile I'd ever seen. "I'm simply offering observation, darling. Nothing more."

She stayed for another thirty minutes, making small talk with Adrian, casting occasional glances at me and my mother. When she finally left, the room felt like it could breathe again.

Adrian pulled me close. "Don't listen to her. Just forget about whatever she said."

"Why would she say those things?" I asked. "Especially in this critical time of my life?"

He didn't answer. His silence was worse than any words could have been.

The next morning, a nurse rushed into my mother's room. Her monitors were alarming. Her blood pressure was dropping. Her oxygen levels were declining.

"We need to move her to intensive care," the nurse said urgently. "Now."

I jumped up, grabbing my mother's hand. "Mum, stay with me. Please, just stay with me."

But she was already slipping away, her eyes closing, her breathing becoming shallow.

Adrian held me back as doctors and nurses flooded the room, pushing tubes and needles and machines between us. I watched, helpless, as they tried to save the last person I had left in this world.

Two hours later, a different doctor, the older one with gray at his temples, walked toward me with that same kind, terrible expression.

I already knew what he was going to say.