CHAPTER THREE: NOTHING LEFT TO SAVE

"I am so sorry, Mrs. Ashford, but we were not able to save your baby."

Dr. Okafor said it softly, with her hand resting on the rail of my hospital bed, and for a long moment I did not understand that the words were meant for me. The room was too white, and the machine beside my head beeped too evenly, and my body felt like a house that had been emptied while I slept. Then my fingers drifted beneath the thin blanket and pressed against my stomach, and I found only flat, aching silence where a heartbeat had been.

"When?" My voice scraped out like paper. "How long ago?"

"Two nights ago, during the surgery. The impact caused severe internal bleeding, and the placenta detached before the rescue team reached you." She paused, and her eyes shone with tears she was too professional to let fall. "You lost a great deal of blood, and the paramedics told me it was nearly forty minutes before they could cut you free. We did everything we possibly could."

Forty minutes. I turned the number over in my mind like a stone I could not swallow.

Dr. Okafor laid a small plastic bag on the bedside table, and inside it lay the sonogram photograph, creased and stained brown at one corner. I did not cry as I reached for it. I only slid it under my pillow and folded both hands over it, the way a mother might cover a sleeping child.

"Where is my husband?" I asked.

The nurse adjusting my IV suddenly became very interested in the tubing. Dr. Okafor glanced at her, and the nurse cleared her throat. "Mr. Ashford checked into the private wing the night of the accident, Mrs. Ashford. He has been with the other patient from the collision."

"Ms. Lane," I said.

"Yes, ma'am."

I nodded slowly and stared at the ceiling tiles until the shape of them blurred. Two days had passed, and not one person had walked through that door with his name on their lips. No flowers had arrived, and no hasty apology had been left on the nightstand. I counted the minutes by the dripping of the IV and told myself that he simply did not know, that he would hurry in at any moment with panic in his eyes and beg me to forgive him once he learned what had been taken from us.

He came at six o'clock that evening.

The door swung open without a knock, and Julian walked in wearing a black tuxedo with his bow tie still hanging loose around his neck. His hair was neatly combed, and his cufflinks gleamed under the fluorescent lights. He did not look like a man who had lost sleep, and he did not look like a man who had been afraid.

"You are awake," he said, as though he were remarking on the weather. "Dr. Okafor told me you were stable."

"Yes." I kept my gaze on his face. "I am awake."

"Good." He glanced at his watch. "The doctors say you have two cracked ribs and a fractured wrist, and that you will be discharged in a few days. You were fortunate, Elise. Veronica is still struggling to walk without help, and the trauma has left her in a terrible state."

I waited for him to say anything else. I waited for a question about my pain, or a tremor in his voice, or even one clumsy sentence about the baby I had begged him to save. He only slid his phone from his pocket and frowned at a message.

"Julian," I said, "do you not want to know why I was on that road?"

"I assumed you were coming home." He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Elise, I know you are upset that I rescued Veronica first, but you must understand that she could not feel her legs. You were conscious and speaking, and you were surrounded by trained rescuers. I made the sensible decision with the information I had."

"I told you I was pregnant."

He stilled, and for the first time his eyes lifted from the screen. Something uncertain crossed his face, and then it hardened into impatience. "I heard nothing of the kind. The storm was deafening, and you were hysterical. If this is another attempt to make me feel guilty, I would ask you to stop."

The words hit me with a quiet, final weight. I looked at the man I had loved for four years, and I understood that he would never ask me whether it was true. He had already decided what kind of woman I was, and nothing I said would ever move him from it.

"The doctor told me everything this morning," Julian continued, his tone cooling. "Frankly, the injuries are far less serious than you made them sound in those messages you sent. I realize you are hurt, but dramatizing a car accident to win my attention is beneath you."

I had sent him no messages. I almost corrected him, and then I found that I did not have the strength left to argue over anything.

"I want a divorce," I said.

The room went perfectly silent. Julian blinked at me, and then he laughed, a short, disbelieving sound that did not reach his eyes. "I beg your pardon?"

"I want a divorce, Julian. I will not ask you twice."

"You are punishing me." He shook his head, and his smile returned, patient and faintly pitying. "You are angry because I chose Veronica for one evening, and you think this will frighten me into apologizing. Elise, you have forgiven me for far worse than this."

"I know I have."

"Then stop behaving irrationally." He straightened his jacket and tapped his phone against his palm. "When you have calmed down and spoken to a doctor about your mood, I will consider your request. For now, I have a charity gala to attend, and Veronica is waiting downstairs in the car. She cannot go alone, and I refuse to cancel on a cause that matters."

He crossed the room, paused at the door, and glanced back at me. For an instant I thought he might say something real, something that would have mended the breaking thing between us. He only nodded, as though we had settled a minor misunderstanding, and walked out.

The door clicked shut behind him.

I lay still for a long time, listening to his footsteps fade down the corridor. Then I reached for the phone on the side table with my good hand, and I dialed a number that I had memorized years ago and never once used.

It rang twice before a calm, clipped voice answered. "Naomi Chen speaking."

"Naomi, it is Elise." My voice did not shake, and that surprised me more than anything else that day. "I need you to prepare my divorce papers tonight."

The line was silent for three full seconds. "Are you certain? Once I file them, there will be no more hiding, Miss Carrington, and the board has been waiting four years for you to call."

I closed my fingers around the sonogram beneath my pillow and stared at the empty doorway where my husband had stood.

"I am certain," I said. "Tell them I am coming home.”