Chapter 3 - The Midnight Rescue
The ambulance sirens finally cut through the wailing wind on Lake Shore Drive twenty minutes later.
Grace was barely conscious. Her head slumped against the deflated airbag, her white sweater soaked through with rain and crimson. Through the warped frame of the driver's side door, she saw the flashing red and blue lights of paramedics splashing across the asphalt.
“We’ve got a trapped occupant!” a muffled voice yelled over the roar of the storm. “Pry bar! Move fast, she’s losing a lot of blood!”
Hands touched her—gentle, urgent, professional. Someone strapped a cervical collar around her neck. A paramedic pressed a heavy gauze pad against her side, and Grace let out a ragged, agonizing scream that tore from the base of her throat.
“Hang in there, Mrs. Cross,” a paramedic shouted, reading her license from the ruined dashboard. “You’re going to be okay. What’s your husband’s number? We need to notify him immediately.”
Grace opened her eyes, her vision swimming with dark spots. She managed to shake her head weakly against the foam brace.
“No,” she whispered, her voice barely audible over the thunder. “Don’t... call him.”
“Ma’am, we have to notify next of kin—especially given your condition.”
“No,” Grace repeated with a sudden, fierce surge of adrenaline. “Call... Clara. My sister.”
She rattled off her sister’s phone number from memory before darkness finally pulled her under, swallowing the pain, the rain, and the betrayal whole.
Two hours later, Grace woke up to the sterile smell of antiseptic and the harsh fluorescent hum of a private recovery room at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. The storm outside had calmed to a steady, rhythmic drizzle that tapped against the double-paned glass.
Her left arm was immobilized in a cast. Her ribs were tightly bound with supportive tape that made breathing feel like inhaling glass shards.
But as she shifted slightly, a sharp, empty ache in her lower abdomen made her freeze.
The door to her room clicked open.
Clara stood in the doorway. Her older sister looked as though she had run through a hurricane—hair wild, eyes red-rimmed and swollen with tears, wearing mismatched sneakers and a heavy winter coat thrown hastily over her pajamas.
When Clara saw Grace’s eyes open, she let out a choked sob and rushed to the bedside, dropping to her knees and grasping Grace’s uninjured right hand with trembling fingers.
“Grace,” Clara wept, pressing her sister’s knuckles to her lips. “Oh, thank God. Thank God. The hospital called me an hour ago. They said... they said you were brought in critical condition.”
Grace looked at her sister, her own eyes filling with hot, silent tears. She didn't need to speak. The look in Clara’s eyes told her everything she needed to know.
“I lost the baby, didn't I?” Grace whispered, the words tearing out of her like shrapnel.
Clara squeezed her hand tighter, her shoulders shaking. “I’m so sorry, Gracie. The doctors tried everything. The internal trauma was just... too severe. You almost didn't make it.”
Grace closed her eyes, letting the tears stream silently down her temples into her hair. Seven weeks of quiet hope, erased in a single second by a reckless driver and a husband who sat drinking scotch while she bled out in the dark.
Then, Clara’s expression hardened. The grief in her eyes transformed into something cold, dark, and lethal.
“I received your scheduled cloud file at midnight,” Clara whispered, her voice dropping into a dangerous register. “The voice memo. And the call logs.”
Grace opened her eyes, looking at her sister. “You heard it?”
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“Every single second,” Clara said, standing up and wiping her face with the back of her hand. She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out Grace’s shattered, water-logged smartphone, which hospital staff had bagged and tagged. “Thirteen missed calls, Grace. Thirteen times you reached out for help while dying in that car. And thirteen times, Damien Cross sent you straight to voicemail.”
Clara leaned down, her voice fierce. “He didn't just break his vows, Grace. He left you to die. And now, we are going to destroy him.”
