Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN IN ROOM 614
After the scheduled email was sent, the room felt smaller.
Investigator Adrian Cole positioned himself near the door.
Miriam stood beside Sophia, one hand resting on the leather folder containing the emergency corporate petition.
Ethan remained near the shattered fruit bowl.
Lauren watched everyone with unsettling calm.
The hospital monitor beeped steadily again, though Lauren’s breathing had slowed almost immediately after the email was sent.
Sophia noticed.
“You aren’t sick,” she said.
Lauren tilted her head.
“Is that what you came here to ask?”
“What are you doing in a hospital bed?”
“I had a procedure.”
“What procedure?”
Lauren looked toward Ethan.
He answered too quickly.
“That’s private.”
Sophia laughed once.
“Private? You brought my husband into the room to feed you strawberries.”
Ethan rubbed his cheek where she had struck him.
“This is exactly why I didn’t tell you.”
“Because you knew I would object to my husband playing nurse for my best friend?”
“Because you turn everything into a courtroom.”
Miriam opened her folder.
“That may be convenient, considering how much time you may soon spend in one.”
Ethan glanced at Investigator Cole.
“Am I under arrest?”
“Not at this moment,” Cole replied.
“Then leave.”
Cole did not move.
“I’m here because your wife submitted evidence involving falsified research authorizations, diverted capital, and potentially illegal biometric data collection.”
Ethan stared at Sophia.
“What did you send?”
“Everything I had.”
“You don’t have anything.”
Lauren’s eyes flickered.
Sophia saw it.
A tiny reaction.
She stepped toward the bed.
“What does she have?”
Lauren looked away.
Sophia turned to Ethan.
“You told her something.”
“No.”
“You wrote that she knew about the child.”
The room went silent.
Ethan’s anger disappeared.
Lauren’s fingers tightened around the blanket.
Miriam looked at Sophia.
“What child?”
Sophia removed the parking receipt from her pocket and held it up.
Ethan recognized his handwriting immediately.
“It isn’t what you think.”
“That sentence has never made anything better.”
“Sophia.”
“What child?”
Ethan looked toward Cole, then Miriam.
“We should discuss this privately.”
“We stopped having private conversations when you built a fake airport soundtrack.”
Lauren closed her eyes.
Sophia faced her.
“Are you pregnant?”
Lauren’s eyes opened.
For the first time, the triumph faded.
“No.”
“Were you?”
“No.”
“Then what procedure did you have?”
Ethan stepped forward.
“That’s enough.”
Cole moved between them.
“Stay where you are.”
Ethan stopped.
Sophia’s gaze remained fixed on Lauren.
Lauren lowered her voice.
“It was a retrieval.”
“A retrieval of what?”
“Embryos.”
Sophia could not breathe.
The word seemed to arrive from far away.
Miriam whispered, “Oh, God.”
Lauren continued before anyone could stop her.
“Three viable embryos.”
Sophia looked at Ethan.
He seemed older suddenly.
Not guilty.
Afraid.
“Whose embryos?” Sophia asked.
Ethan said nothing.
Lauren answered.
“Yours.”
The floor shifted beneath Sophia.
She grabbed the back of a chair.
“That isn’t possible.”
“It is,” Lauren said.
“My embryos were destroyed after the clinic closed.”
“That’s what you were told.”
Sophia remembered the gray consultation room.
The doctor’s careful expression.
The letter stating that the remaining embryos created during her final fertility treatment had been deemed nonviable following a storage malfunction.
She had mourned them without graves.
Ethan had held her on the bathroom floor while she cried.
Or perhaps he had simply watched her break over children he knew were still alive.
Sophia’s voice became thin.
“You kept them?”
Ethan looked at the wall.
“I protected them.”
“From me?”
“You were unstable.”
The words entered the room like poison.
Sophia stared at him.
After the second miscarriage, she had suffered panic attacks. She had taken a leave from the company. She had woken some nights unable to breathe.
Ethan had encouraged her to sign broad medical consent forms.
He had said they were necessary to close the treatment accounts.
“How?” she asked.
Ethan’s eyes remained lowered.
“The clinic transferred the material before it dissolved.”
“To where?”
“A private facility.”
“Under whose authorization?”
“You signed.”
Miriam’s voice cut through the room.
“She signed forms while medically sedated and under documented psychiatric care. Any transfer outside the stated treatment purpose would be highly questionable.”
Lauren gave a faint shrug.
“She still signed.”
Sophia turned on her.
“What did you do with my embryos?”
Lauren’s expression became guarded.
“I didn’t know they were yours at first.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“I agreed to carry one.”
The monitor seemed to stop.
Perhaps it did not.
Perhaps Sophia simply could no longer hear it.
She looked at Ethan.
Then at Lauren.
“You planned to have my child?”
Lauren swallowed.
“It was supposed to be ours.”
Ethan closed his eyes.
Sophia’s voice became dangerously calm.
“Ours?”
Lauren lifted her chin again.
“Mine and Ethan’s.”
Sophia crossed the distance between them before anyone could react.
Miriam caught her wrist.
Cole stepped forward.
Sophia did not strike Lauren.
She only stood over her, shaking.
“You thought you could steal my husband, my company, and my child?”
Lauren’s mouth twisted.
“You were never going to use them.”
“They were mine.”
“They were cells in storage.”
“They were my children.”
“And Ethan’s.”
Ethan flinched.
That reaction gave Sophia a new certainty.
“This was not his idea alone.”
Lauren said nothing.
Sophia looked at the IV bag.
The clear line ran to Lauren’s arm, but the clamp was closed. There was no medication flowing.
The hospital gown was too neatly pressed.
The bouquet had no card.
The room lacked the usual clutter of a patient recovering from a procedure.
“This is staged,” Sophia said.
Cole scanned the room.
Lauren’s face tightened.
Sophia moved toward the bedside cabinet and opened the first drawer.
Empty.
The second contained only a disposable phone.
Ethan lunged forward.
Cole blocked him.
Sophia picked up the phone.
A message glowed on the screen.
SHE IS HERE. BEGIN PHASE TWO.
Sophia looked at Lauren.
“Who sent this?”
Lauren reached for the phone.
Sophia stepped away.
Another message appeared.
REMOVE SOPHIA FROM THE COMPANY BEFORE MIDNIGHT.
Miriam took the phone and photographed the screen.
Ethan’s face turned gray.
Cole looked at him.
“What happens at midnight?”
Ethan did not answer.
Lauren began pulling the hospital sensor from her finger.
“I’m leaving.”
Cole stood in front of the door.
“No one is leaving.”
“You said we weren’t under arrest.”
“You’re not.”
“Then move.”
Cole’s phone rang.
He checked the display, answered, and listened.
His expression changed.
“What happened?” Sophia asked.
Cole ended the call.
He looked directly at her.
“There has been an explosion at CrossHale’s secondary research facility.”
Ethan staggered backward.
Lauren whispered, “No.”
Cole continued.
“Security found one body.”
Sophia’s heart pounded.
“Who?”
“We don’t know yet.”
Ethan covered his face with one hand.
But Lauren was staring at Sophia.
May you like
Not with fear for the dead.
With fear that the dead person might still be able to speak.
