My Husband Asked For A Hall Pass On My Delivery Date Chapter 08
The Reckoning
[Ethan’s POV]
He felt like someone had swung a bat into the center of his chest.
He was still asking. “What do you mean the baby’s gone?”
No one answered him.
The couple looked at him with something between disgust and pity, then turned and shut their door. The sound of it clicking closed echoed down the empty hallway.
He ran to the NICU. Slammed his palms against the glass like a madman.
A doctor came out, saw who he was, and pulled a file from the cabinet without a word. Expression flat. Clinical.
Oxygen deprivation at birth.
Meconium contamination.
Severe lung infection.
Multiple resuscitation attempts.
Time of death: 6:47 PM.
Each line on the record was a blade dragged across something already raw.
“If a family member had been present earlier, the mother wouldn’t have deteriorated to that extent.” The doctor slid the file back into the drawer. No sympathy in his voice. Just fact. “The baby’s condition may still have been critical regardless. But she should never have had to bear every decision alone.”
Ethan stared at the copy of the death certificate.
And there it was. Clara’s signature. Shaky. Barely legible. Slanting off the line like the hand that wrote it had nothing left.
He thought of her voice on that phone call. The crack in it. The smallness.
‘Andy can’t hold on much longer.’
He thought of what he’d said back.
‘There are doctors in the hospital. Don’t scare yourself.’
He thought of Sienna asking if she was holding him up. And how fast, how instinctively, he’d turned to reassure her first.
His legs gave out.
His knees hit the cold tile floor.
It wasn’t forty-eight hours of leave he’d taken.
It was their entire lives.
…
He called Clara’s mother.
The second the line connected, he remembered. Her heart condition. Severe.
He stumbled through some lie about Clara being upset, asked if she’d gone home.
Silence on the other end. A long, terrible silence.
Then her mother’s voice, so weak it barely carried: “Tell me the truth. My grandson. Did something happen to him?”
Ethan couldn’t speak.
His silence was the answer.
A muffled gasp came through the phone. Then the sound of something ceramic hitting the floor. Then screaming in the background, someone calling for an ambulance.
Her mother was rushed to the ER.
By the time Ethan arrived, she had just regained consciousness.
He tried to explain. Tried to apologize. Tried to say it was all his fault.
She just looked at him. Her eyes hollow. Like she was staring through him at something far away and irreversible.
“When my husband died, you weren’t there. Now my daughter’s baby is gone. And you weren’t there either.”
“Ethan.” Each word came out measured. Final. Like a judge reading a sentence. “Your family owes my daughter two lives.”
She closed her eyes. Refused to look at him again.
The nurse escorted him out. “The patient can’t take any more emotional distress. Please leave.”
He stood outside the ER doors, and for the first time in his life, understood what it felt like to be the person no one wanted to see.
…
He called Zara. Clara’s friend.
The line picked up. A cold laugh came through before he could say a word.
“Well, well. The great Ethan Hale finally rejoins reality.”
His voice was wrecked. “Zara, please. Tell me where she is.”
“She left the city.” Not a shred of warmth. “And don’t bother asking about the funeral arrangements. You lost that right.”
“Let me see her. Just once. Please.”
“Andy waited for you and you never came.” A pause. The words that followed were surgical. “Now no one has to wait for you anymore.”
The line went dead.