Chapter 4 - Awakening in the DarkIn the recovery ward, the rhythmic whoosh of the heart monitor was the only sound cutting through the dimness.
Hannah stirred slowly. Her eyelids felt like lead, her throat scorched and dry. When she tried to move, a sharp ache radiated through her abdomen, reminding her of the nightmare in the operating room. For a terrifying second, panic clawed at her chest.
The babies.
"Don't try to sit up," a familiar, deep voice murmured from the shadows beside her bed.
Hannah froze. Her breath caught in her throat. She turned her head slowly on the stiff hospital pillow.
Ethan sat in a vinyl chair beside the bed. He looked exhausted, his tie ripped off, his white coat discarded, his shirt sleeves rolled up to reveal forearms tense with suppressed emotion. The arrogance that had once defined him was completely gone, replaced by an agonizing, raw vulnerability.
"Ethan..." Her voice was a dry rasp.
He stood up instantly, pouring a cup of water and holding a flexible straw to her lips. She drank greedily, the cool liquid soothing her burning throat. When she finished, Ethan set the cup down and gently, almost fearfully, placed his hand over hers. Her fingers were still rough and calloused from years of hard labor in Cicero warehouses.
"They're alive," Ethan said softly, his voice thick with tears he refused to let fall. "The twins. A boy and a girl. They're in the NICU. They're breathing on their own, Hannah."
Tears spilled over Hannah's eyelashes, tracking hot paths down her pale cheeks. She didn't pull her hand away, but she turned her face toward the wall, a bitter ache washing over her. "Why did you come in here? Come to gloat? Or did your mother send you to make sure I finished dying?"
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"I didn't know," Ethan whispered, dropping to his knees beside the bed, pressing his forehead against the edge of the mattress. "Hannah, I swear to God, I didn't know you were pregnant. I didn't know my family fabricated those files until today. I was a blind, arrogant fool, and I let them destroy us."
Hannah looked back at him, her eyes flashing with a sudden, fierce fire born of five years of survival. "You didn't just let them destroy us, Ethan. You looked right into my eyes and told me you never really knew me. You threw me out into the pouring rain with nothing but the clothes on my back while I was shaking and terrified. Words like that don't just disappear because you're sorry now."
