Morgue Call

1

Nine months pregnant, and the woman my husband, Cameron, had always idealized slipped me an abortion pill.

The contractions tore through me, a searing agony, but he told me to just hold on. Because she—Sara—was supposedly in labor, too.

To keep me from "stealing her thunder," he had his housekeeper tie me upside down to a large cat tree in the corner of the room.

"I heard that if the blood rushes to your head, it can delay labor," he said, his voice cold and distant. "Even if you are about to give birth, you will wait. Sera's child must be born first. I promised her our family would recognize her baby as the firstborn heir."

The drug-induced cramps were a vicious, twisting fire in my gut. I tumbled from the cat tree, landing in a heap on the floor, and crawled toward him, begging him to take me to a hospital.

He drove his foot into my stomach.

"Sara is the kindest person I know. She would never drug you," he spat, his face a mask of fury. "But you, you venomous bitch, I bet you're the one who slipped something into her food to make her go into premature labor!"

His voice dripped with contempt. "You're this far along anyway. What difference could a little pill possibly make?"

Later, after he had seen Sara settled and comfortable in her private hospital suite, he called home. He asked his assistant if I was still "throwing a tantrum."

The assistant’s voice trembled. "Sir… Mrs. Thorne and the baby… they're in the morgue."

The combination of the induced labor and the constant, throbbing pain of the contractions was overwhelming. My head swam from the lack of oxygen, the world turning grey at the edges as I dangled upside down. Bitter fluid rose in my throat, and with a wretched gasp, I fell, bringing the entire cat tree crashing down with me.

I tried to curl around my belly, to shield our child, but a warm gush of liquid soaked through my clothes and pooled on the floor beneath me. My water had broken. I could feel the baby struggling inside me, a desperate, frantic push to be born.

"Martha!" I screamed, my voice raw. "Martha, please, get me to a hospital! I'm not going to make it!"

The housekeeper, Martha, strolled over, casually cracking sunflower seeds between her teeth. She wrinkled her nose in disgust at the mess on the floor.

"Honestly, what's all this drama for?" she sneered. "Mr. Thorne isn't even here to see it. You could die on this floor right now and no one would care. He put me here to watch you, you know. To stop you from constantly competing with Miss Sera. You should really learn your place."

She pinched her nose, grabbed me by the arms, and began to haul me back into an inverted position against the frame. A sudden, terrifying surge of blood flowed from between my legs. She slapped me hard across the face, then pulled out her phone.

Cameron, having just finished arranging a team of specialists for Sara, answered with an impatient bark. "Give birth? Don't be ridiculous. If her baby comes out before Sera's, you can forget about your ...