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CHAPTER 3

Author: LiahđŸ„°
last update Petsa ng paglalathala: 2026-10-06 00:12:23

My eyes snap open and I feel a dull ache in my head. I scan around and see cannulas connected to my wrist, but I’m a thousand percent sure the bed I’m lying on isn’t as rocky as a hospital bed, and neither is the room.

The room looks and smells kind of familiar, but I can’t figure out whose room I’m in or how I got here in the first place. Thankfully, the door swings open and Elias trudges in, dressed in his medical coat.

“You’re awake!” He drops the pile of files he’s holding on the cabinet and rushes toward me on the bed.

“How are you feeling now?” he asks as I pull myself up to sit, and he quickly guides me up.

“I have a slight headache. What happened to me?” I mutter, my memory in jumbles.

Last I remember, we were all in court and I had divorced Damien. What happened after that?

“You passed out yesterday at the court, so I brought you here.”

I passed out? “What happened? I mean, what’s wrong with me?” I rasp, getting worried.

Elias smiles and gently rests his hand on my thigh. “Shhh. Don’t panic. It’s nothing serious. You just collapsed from excessive stress because your system couldn’t adjust to your current condition.”

“Condition? What condition?”

“I don’t know how you’ll take this, but
” He trails off and stands up. My eyes follow him closely as he walks to the cabinet. He pulls out a sealed envelope and comes back, passing it to me.

Wondering what it is, I begin to check it out, but then he drops the bomb.

“You are pregnant.” He finally divulges, and I flinch, almost jumping out of my skin. My eyes catch the word “positive” on the pregnancy result before it drops from my hand.

“What? Pregnant?!” How?

On any normal day, pregnancy is supposed to be the most wonderful news a woman can hear, but right now it feels like the worst thing I’ve ever heard.

“Yeah. And you really need enough rest, considering your current medical condition. While running some checks on you, I discovered you have hypotension. You have to
”

Whatever Elias is saying isn’t making any sense to me. I stop listening at some point, and the only thing swirling in my head is the pregnancy.

“I will remove the baby.” I eventually blurt out of the blue, cutting off whatever Elias is saying.

His brows pull up in shock, and he goes dazed as if I just said something abominable.

“But why? I mean, you can’t just remove an innocent baby. Okay
 look
 Hear me out. I know you just had a falling out with your hus
 your ex-husband, but that doesn’t mean you should take the life of an innocent baby.”

I scoff. Honestly, I wasn’t even thinking about Damien.

But the baby itself
 If it will end in a miscarriage like the rest, why should I bother keeping it and getting attached!

I really don’t want any more heartaches.

“It’s not about Damien, Elias. I’d rather not wait for it to end in a miscarriage before I take it out myself. I don’t want to put my hopes on something that isn’t there. And maybe you’re right. I want to forget about Damien too, so I don’t want to have anything that will connect me to him.”

“But what if the child ends up staying?”

“That’s impossible. It won’t.”

“You can’t be so sure.”

I shake my head and scoff. “Let’s not argue about this. I am removing the baby and that’s final.”

“Look, if it’s about the baby, trust me, you’ll be fine. I’m pretty sure the series of miscarriages was due to your poor health. Like I said earlier, you have hypotension. You have a very weak system, which means you needed a lot of rest during at least the first trimester of pregnancy. But you were always draining yourself with the hospital stress and all that.”

I knew I had minor hypotension, but I never really paid it any mind. I had no room to slack off on my duties. It has always been about pleasing my ungrateful parents. So even when I noticed it, I was always in the hospital working.

“Can we try that at least?” Elias’s voice pulls me out of my thoughts and I give him a confused look. “You’ll stay away from hard jobs, even mundane tasks, for the first three months of the pregnancy.”

“What
? We?”

“Yes. I’ll support you the best way I can, if I have to, until you get back on your feet. I wouldn’t advise my patient to take the life of an innocent baby.” He counters, and I find myself chuckling.

“C’mon, Elias, I’m not your responsibility. You’ve done more than enough already and I appreciate it. Besides, I intend to leave this city once I get back on my feet. I want to start a new life.”

“Then that’s not a problem. I got called by that hospital in Texas I’d been applying to. I resigned from this hospital today and I’ll be moving down next week. We could move together
 that’s if you don’t mind.”

I stare at Elias, unable to form any words. He has already done enough for me, and I still can’t believe he has my best interest at heart.

Well, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to keep this baby after all, as long as I never see Damien again.

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  • Too Late To Say Sorry, Mr. Hartwell   CHAPTER 8

    We don’t go out the front.Naomi doesn’t even need to say it. One look at her face and Elias is already on his feet, one hand under my elbow, steering me through the kitchen of the tea house past a startled cook and a stack of clean saucers. The back door opens onto an alley that smells of wet cardboard and fried onions.“Wait,” I whisper.I can’t help it. Through the thin wall, I hear a voice carry from the front room.It is smooth. Patient. Reasonable.“I’m only here as a worried father, Ms. Park. My daughter is in a fragile state. I’d simply like to know that she’s safe.”My father.Twenty-eight years of that voice. It could talk a board into silence and a nurse into tears, and it never rose above a murmur. I used to think calm was the same thing as strength. Standing in a greasy alley with my hand pressed against my stomach, I finally understand the difference. Strength doesn’t need to freeze a daughter’s bank accounts at midnight and call it concern.“Serena.” Elias’s hand tighte

  • Too Late To Say Sorry, Mr. Hartwell   CHAPTER 7

    I don’t sleep.I lie on Elias’s bed with my eyes open, one hand on my stomach, listening to the city breathe outside the window. Every time I close my eyes I see the amber bottle. Every time I drift, I hear my mother’s voice, thin and pleading. Please, darling. I’m asking you.At six, I give up and get dressed.At nine, Elias drives me across town to a tea house with a sagging green awning, tucked behind the courthouse where I signed my marriage away. Naomi Park chose it herself. “Nobody who matters to your father would ever walk in here,” she told me on the phone.She is waiting in the back room, at a small table with a pot of tea she hasn’t touched. She is about forty, in a dark suit, her hair pinned back so severely it looks painful. Her eyes go to Elias first, sharp and measuring.“I asked you to come alone, Dr. Vance.”“He stays,” I say.A pause. Then she nods once. “Then he stays.”We sit. She slides a thick cream envelope across the table, sealed with brittle red wax. My grandm

  • Too Late To Say Sorry, Mr. Hartwell   CHAPTER 6

    The bottle slips from my fingers and hits the carpet.It doesn’t break. It just rolls to a stop against the leg of the chair, small and brown and harmless, like it hasn’t been sitting in my bag for months, waiting.“Serena.” Elias is in front of me before I even see him move. His hands close around my shoulders. “Look at me. Breathe.”“I drank it.” My voice comes out thin and strange, like it belongs to someone standing far away. “Every morning. For three years.”“We don’t know what it is yet.”“He knew.” I look up at him, and the room blurs. “Damien wrote it down on a page from a prescription pad. He knew, Elias. Why would he write that unless it was
”I can’t finish the sentence.Because if I finish it, it becomes real. And if it becomes real, then every miscarriage, every night I sat on the bathroom floor with my hands pressed over my mouth so no one would hear me, every time I whispered what is wrong with me, it all becomes something else.Something that was done to me.“Hey.” Eli

  • Too Late To Say Sorry, Mr. Hartwell   CHAPTER 5

    Three knocks.Slow. Careful. The kind a man gives when he already knows he isn’t welcome.I freeze in the middle of the kitchen with the bowl still in my hands. Water runs over my fingers and I forget to turn off the tap.“Serena.”His voice comes through the wood, low and rough, like he has been shouting for hours and lost it halfway.I set the bowl in the sink without a sound. Then I do something I’m not proud of. I tiptoe to the door like a child hiding from a monster and press my back against the wall beside the frame, where the peephole can’t see me.Elias told me not to open it for anyone.I wasn’t planning to.“I know you’re in there,” Damien says. “The light is on under the door. And Elias’s car isn’t downstairs.”Of course he checked. Of course he did.“I got the address from someone at the hospital. I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry for that too.” A pause. “I’m not going to force my way in. I wouldn’t. I just need you to know that.”I say nothing. My hand slides to my stomach on i

  • Too Late To Say Sorry, Mr. Hartwell   CHAPTER 4

    The pregnancy test is still on the floor where it fell. I stare at it for so long that Elias finally bends down, picks it up, and places it on the cabinet like it might bite him.“Say something,” he says.“I already did. I said I’m removing it.”“You did. And I said we should try first.” He pulls a chair beside the bed and sits, elbows on his knees. “Serena, I’m not asking you to be happy about this. I’m asking you to look before you decide.”“Look at what?”“Your baby.”I flinch at the word. My baby. Not Damien’s baby, not the heir, not the thing that will end in blood and tears like the rest. Mine.“Elias
”“Ten minutes. If you still want to end it after that, I will personally book the appointment and drive you there. No lectures. I swear.”I want to say no. Every part of me that has been broken over three years of miscarriages wants to say no, roll over, and pretend this room does not exist.But I am a doctor. And doctors look at the scan before they decide.“Ten minutes,” I say,

  • Too Late To Say Sorry, Mr. Hartwell   CHAPTER 3

    My eyes snap open and I feel a dull ache in my head. I scan around and see cannulas connected to my wrist, but I’m a thousand percent sure the bed I’m lying on isn’t as rocky as a hospital bed, and neither is the room.The room looks and smells kind of familiar, but I can’t figure out whose room I’m in or how I got here in the first place. Thankfully, the door swings open and Elias trudges in, dressed in his medical coat.“You’re awake!” He drops the pile of files he’s holding on the cabinet and rushes toward me on the bed.“How are you feeling now?” he asks as I pull myself up to sit, and he quickly guides me up.“I have a slight headache. What happened to me?” I mutter, my memory in jumbles.Last I remember, we were all in court and I had divorced Damien. What happened after that?“You passed out yesterday at the court, so I brought you here.”I passed out? “What happened? I mean, what’s wrong with me?” I rasp, getting worried.Elias smiles and gently rests his hand on my thigh. “Sh

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