Chapter 2 - The Cruelty of Blood
"Nora!" I screamed, lunging forward with every ounce of strength left in my exhausted body.
My knees slammed into the hard tile just in time to catch her upper body before her head cracked against the corner of the lower cabinets. She was burning with fever, yet shivering so violently her teeth clicked together like dice in a cup. Her breath came in ragged, wheezing hitches that sounded like tearing paper.
"Ryan... Ryan, it hurts," she whimpered, her fingernails clawing desperately into the fabric of my flannel shirt, digging so deep I could feel the sharp bite against my chest. "The pressure... it’s not letting go. It feels like tearing inside. Please... don't let our baby die."
A dark, terrifying patch of crimson fluid began blooming across the pale yellow hem of her sundress, pooling on the cold white grout beneath her hips.
Panic—cold, suffocating, and absolute—seized my brain.
"Call 911 right now!" I bellowed toward the living room archway. "Brooke! Tessa! Pick up the damn phone and call an ambulance! Nora is bleeding!"
Paige walked into the kitchen first, holding a freshly opened can of diet soda. She popped a piece of bubblegum, crossing her arms over her chest, her expression oozing with utter indifference.
"Ryan, stop being so dramatic," Paige sighed, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling. "She probably just pulled a muscle trying to milk your sympathy. Do you have any idea how much an emergency ambulance ride costs in this county? At least three grand! You know damn well Mom needs that money on Friday to fix the transmission on the sedan, or she can’t drive Tessa to her beauty school classes."
"Are you insane?!" I screamed, my voice shaking with tears of pure rage. "She’s eight months pregnant and she is bleeding out on the floor! Call the paramedics before I rip that phone out of your hands!"
Marla waddled into the kitchen, wiping potato chip grease onto her sweatpants. She scowled down at Nora with a look of pure disgust, as if my dying wife were nothing more than a stray dog that had tracked mud across the linoleum.
"Get up off that floor, Nora," Marla ordered, snapping her fingers sharply near Nora's ear. "Stop putting on this ridiculous Broadway performance the second Ryan walks through the door! You've been sitting on the couch watching soap operas all day while my daughters and I had to beg you for a simple glass of iced tea! You think you're royalty just because you're carrying a Mercer child? You're an ungrateful, manipulative little—"
"Get away from her!" I snapped, my arm shooting out to shove Marla back.
My mother gasped in shock, stumbling against the refrigerator.
I fumbled into my work pants with one shaking hand, pulling out my battered smartphone. My fingers were slick with cold sweat as I punched 9-1-1 and jammed the speakerphone button against the floor.
"911, what is your emergency?" the dispatcher's calm, metallic voice rang out.
"My wife is thirty-three weeks pregnant!" I yelled into the receiver, my chest heaving as I pressed Nora tighter against my heart, trying to shield her trembling body from my family. "She collapsed! She's bleeding heavily, she has a high fever, and she’s having continuous contractions! Please, God, send an ambulance to 412 Maple Crest Drive right now!"
"Help is already being dispatched, sir. Keep her warm, keep her flat on her left side, and do not attempt to move her," the operator instructed. "Paralegals and paramedics are four minutes away."
I threw the phone down and cradled Nora’s pale, sweat-drenched face between my trembling palms. "Look at me, Nora. Look right into my eyes, sweetheart. Stay with me. Breathe. In and out. The doctors are coming. I’m right here. Ryan is right here. Nobody is going to hurt you anymore."
Nora’s eyelids fluttered open, glassy and unfocused. Her dry lips brushed against my ear.
"Ryan... they wouldn't let me eat," she whispered, a fresh wave of tears cutting clean tracks through the grime on her cheeks. "Every time I tried to make a sandwich... Marla took it. She said I was eating them out of house and home... She said I was a burden on your paycheck... Paige locked the pantry... they made me clean their rooms on my hands and knees..."
A deafening silence fell over my mind.
For the past eight weeks, ever since Marla claimed her landlord evicted her and begged to move into our modest rental, I had been working fourteen-hour days, seven days a week, believing I was being a good son and a provider. Every single night when I came home exhausted, Marla would greet me with a sad smile, telling me Nora had slept all day and refused to lift a finger.
They hadn't just been freeloading. They had been slowly, methodically torturing my pregnant wife while I broke my spine to feed them.
The high-pitched wail of emergency sirens screamed down our quiet suburban street, red and blue strobe lights painting the kitchen walls in bloody crimson.
Brooke stepped in front of the front door, looking out through the curtains with a grimace. "Great. Just great. Now the whole neighborhood is going to think we’re white trash. You really have no class, do you, Nora?"
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I didn't yell. I didn't scream. I looked Brooke dead in the eyes with a murderous, unblinking glare that made her instantly take three steps back.
"If you don't unlock that front door this exact second," I said in a dead, hollow whisper, "I will throw you through the living room window myself."
