CHAPTER 2:
“You moved the water,” I whispered, the words tasting like ash in my mouth.
Eleanor scoffed, taking a delicate sip of her wine. “She needs to learn resilience, David. I raised you and your sister without collapsing on the furniture like a Victorian invalid. A house with a newborn cannot fall into ruin. I told her she could have a drink when the roast was in the oven.”
“She’s sick!” I screamed, the sound tearing out of me. I scrambled for Clara’s pockets, looking for her phone to call 911. It wasn’t there.
“Where is her phone, Mom?”
Eleanor casually gestured toward the kitchen with her fork. “On top of the refrigerator. She was too distracted by it. I told her, ‘You need to learn how to be a mother and a wife before you worry about texting your little friends.’ She threw a tantrum and decided to take a nap.”
I left Clara’s side just long enough to sprint into the kitchen. The sink was overflowing with heavy cast-iron pots. The floor was slick with grease. Eleanor hadn’t just made Clara cook; she had forced my wife, recovering from a traumatic birth, to prepare a massive, labor-intensive feast while denying her basic sustenance. I grabbed Clara’s phone from the top of the fridge. The screen was cracked.
When I rushed back, Clara’s eyelids fluttered. “David…” she breathed, her voice barely a dry rasp. “Help… Leo…”
“I’m here, baby. I’m taking you to the hospital.”
I dialed 911, my hands shaking so violently I dropped the phone twice. I strapped the hysterical Leo to my chest in his carrier, grabbed a heavy winter blanket, and wrapped Clara in it, lifting her into my arms. She weighed almost nothing.
“Where do you think you are going?” Eleanor demanded, finally standing up, her chair scraping harshly against the hardwood. “You are not taking my grandson out in this rain because this girl is throwing a pity party.”
I didn’t yell. I didn’t argue. I looked at her with a dead, hollow stare. “If she dies, I will spend the rest of my life making sure you rot in a cell.”
I kicked the front door open, leaving her standing amidst the wreckage of her own making.
The drive to the ER was a blur of flashing hazards and relentless rain. By the time I carried Clara through the sliding glass doors of Chicago General, she was completely unresponsive. A team of nurses swarmed us with a gurney, tearing her from my arms.
“What happened?” a doctor barked, shining a penlight into Clara’s unresponsive eyes.
“She’s four weeks postpartum. She hasn’t eaten or drank all day. She was forced to cook. I think she’s severely dehydrated,” I rambled, bouncing Leo on my chest as the baby finally began to exhaust himself into a whimpering sleep.
They wheeled her through double doors, leaving me standing in the blinding fluorescent light of the waiting room, covered in my wife’s cold sweat.
Thirty minutes later, the attending physician walked out. His face was grim.
“Mr. Miller? Your wife is in critical condition. She’s suffering from severe hypoglycemia and catastrophic dehydration. On top of that, her postpartum stitches are severely infected. Her fever is spiking at 104 degrees. She’s hovering on the edge of a coma.”
The room tilted. I grabbed the edge of the reception desk to stay upright.
“If you had come home thirty minutes later,” the doctor said, his voice dropping an octave, “we would be having a very different, much more tragic conversation.”
I closed my eyes, a silent sob wracking my chest. But before I could even process the horror of how close I came to losing my wife, the automatic doors of the ER slid open again.
Two uniformed police officers walked in, accompanied by a woman wearing a badge that read Child Protective Services.
They walked directly toward me.
“David Miller?” the taller officer asked, resting his hand on his utility belt. “We received an emergency call from a family member. We have a report of child endangerment, severe domestic neglect, and kidnapping.”
I stared at them, the world stopping on its axis. Eleanor hadn’t just stayed in the apartment. She had made a preemptive strike.
