Chapter 5 - The Ultimate Price
Sophie was fully awake on the operating table, her eyes darting wildly around the blinding white room.
Her heart had miraculously restarted, but the monitors were still screaming a frantic, irregular rhythm.
Because they had rushed the surgery, she had no general anesthesia in her system.
The sheer agony of her open abdomen hit her nervous system all at once, and she let out a silent, breathless scream.
"Hold her down!" the anesthesiologist yelled, scrambling to prepare a sedative syringe.
"Don't put her under yet!" the lead surgeon shouted, holding his bloody hands up.
"Her blood pressure is dangerously low, and the anesthesia will instantly stop her fragile heart."
Through the observation glass, I watched Sophie thrash her head side to side in unimaginable pain.
Then, her frantic eyes locked onto mine through the window.
Even through the thick glass, I could feel the agonizing weight of her gaze piercing my soul.
She knew she was dying.
She knew there was only one choice left to make.
Sophie weakly raised a trembling, blood-stained hand and pointed a single finger toward the surgeon.
She mouthed three deliberate words that I could read with absolute, terrifying clarity.
"Save the baby."
The surgeon hesitated, looking down at the horrific medical reality of her tangled internal organs.
"If I cut the placental cord now, you will lose a massive amount of blood," he warned her loudly.
Sophie nodded weakly, a single tear escaping the corner of her eye and sliding into her hairline.
"Do it," she whispered, her voice barely carrying through the surgical microphones.
"Wait!" I screamed, banging my fists against the reinforced observation glass.
"You can't do this! You can't just let her die!"
But the surgeon had already made his decision based on her explicit consent.
With a swift, practiced motion, he clamped the cord and lifted a tiny, blue-tinted infant from the catastrophic ruin of her abdomen.
The moment the baby was detached, a terrifying geyser of dark red blood erupted from Sophie's internal cavity.
"We have a massive arterial hemorrhage!" an assisting nurse screamed in sheer panic.
The baby was rushed to a warming table in the corner, entirely silent and unmoving.
I didn't even look at my child.
My eyes were completely fixated on Sophie, whose chest had stopped moving entirely.
The heart monitor let out that familiar, soul-crushing continuous tone of a flatline once again.
"Time of death," the surgeon said softly, looking at the clock on the wall.
"Two fourteen in the afternoon."
My legs gave out completely, and I collapsed onto the cold linoleum floor of the observation room.
The world went entirely dark as I let out a feral, agonizing scream of pure grief.
Then, the heavy metal door to my room burst open, hitting the wall with a deafening crash.
A rogue ICU nurse sprinted into the room, dragging a massive, complex piece of machinery behind her.
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"Do not call the time of death!" she screamed at the surgical team through the intercom.
"I just got off the phone with the federal registry, and Ethan's medical records just cleared the system."
