1 On the way to the hospital for a placental abruption, our car collided head-on with a wedding limousine. I was thrown from the vehicle, a pool of blood spreading beneath me. Through a haze of pain, I watched my husband, Ethan, ignore me completely. Instead, he cradled another woman in his arms, whispering to the driver, “Just run her over. The payout for a fatality is less.” As he spoke, the car lurched forward, straight towards me. I was run over, again and again, until my legs went numb. During the emergency surgery, my husband’s phone was unreachable. But he was there, sitting in the hospital corridor just outside. I could still hear his voice, laced with a chilling relief. “It’s for the best if they can’t reach me. If she dies, we pay less.” … “The patient is in her third trimester. The impact from the collision has made her condition critical. There’s no time to wait for family consent. Page every available doctor to the OR now.” “And get on the phone with every hospital in the city. We need blood reserves on standby in case things go south.” I could hear the head surgeon barking orders, but Ethan, my husband whose phone was perpetually off, paid me no mind. His hands were clasped tightly around the hand of the woman in the wedding dress. “It’s okay,” he murmured to her, his voice a tender caress. “I’m here.” The woman was trembling, but Ethan’s only response was a dismissive, “It’s not that serious. Every woman has babies. If something happens to her, it’s just her bad luck.” In that moment, I almost hated the hyper-acute hearing that comes before death. It allowed me to hear every curse Ethan uttered against me and our unborn child. He wanted us both dead, a neat and tidy tragedy closed with a small payout. If my family tried to make a scene, he had a team of lawyers ready to handle it. In the end, I would be nothing but a box of ashes. Throughout the entire ordeal, he never once came over to even check if it was me, even though I was lying right in front of him, carrying his child. A single glance would have been enough. But he just said the sight of me was too disgusting, that the fat spilling from my wounds would upset the woman in white. He covered her eyes and led her away to a bench far from the chaos. In that instant, every illusion I held about Ethan shattered. The man who had wept with joy when I told him I was pregnant, the man who called everyone he knew to say that marrying me was the happiest day of his life—that man was dead. A minute before the nurses wheeled me into surgery, I saw Ethan’s parents rushing into the hospital. They didn’t run towards me. They ran to Ethan and the woman. His mother’s voice was frantic. “What happened? Are you hurt? Daisy, you can’t get hurt! How would your godmother ever explain it to your mom?” And then she started to cry. The way she held that woman felt so foreign, so strange. The image was burned into my mind even as my vision blurred and the world faded to black. The lights in the operating room were terrifyingly cold, hanging like pale ghosts above me. I could hear the hushed whispers of the doctors and the orderly clatter of instruments as the nurses counted them out. “Massive blood loss. The placenta is exposed. We need to perform an emergency C-section, but we risk a fatal hemorrhage…” “Has anyone been able to contact the patient’s family?” “No. The husband’s phone is still off. We can’t get through to anyone else.” A heavy sigh followed that announcement. A nurse added, “The patient was in a taxi on her way to an appointment when she noticed signs of placental abruption. The collision with the wedding car happened on her way here.” “She’s this far along and her family let her take a taxi by herself? What were they thinking?” Then the anesthesia took hold, and I sank into unconsciousness. I don’t know how difficult the surgery was. I only know that when I woke up again, the room was filled with exclamations of awe. “It’s a miracle. A genuine miracle. To wake up after losing that much blood…” After the head surgeon confirmed my condition was stable, he had me sign the consent forms myself. As I signed, I glanced at the time. A full week had passed. I looked at the surgeon. “My husband?” 2 “We were never able to get in touch with your husband.” A bitter laugh escaped my lips. Never able to get in touch… what a joke. Then, the doctor’s expression turned somber. “The baby was born alive,” he said gently, “but he was born with… complications. He passed away two days ago.” Clatter. The pen fell from my hand. I grabbed the doctor’s arm, my voice a choked sob. “I… I want to see him.” The doctor exchanged a look with the nurses. They decided to let me. They placed me in a wheelchair and slowly pushed me out of the room, down the long corridor to the hospital morgue. He was in a small, refrigerated drawer. When they pulled it open, I saw his tiny hands, clenched into tight fists. He looked exactly as I had imagined: a perfect, high nose, a small mouth, a dusting of soft, light hair, and faint, golden eyebrows. I reached out to hold him. My fingers met only ice-cold stillness. It was only when I touched him that I saw the stitches on his tiny arm. The doctor explained softly, “During the accident… when you were run over repeatedly… the child was born with his limbs already…” I looked up at him, the meaning crashing down on me. My baby, born alive, had been born with severed limbs. Even if he had survived, he would have been disabled for life. In that moment, the dam broke. I had been trying to steel myself, to accept his death. But I couldn’t accept this. Every single one of my prenatal check-ups had been perfect. The doctors had all said he was developing beautifully. And he had been born… in pieces. No mother could remain calm in the face of such a horror. Ignoring the protests of my own healing body, I insisted on holding him. The cold of his tiny form was shocking, but in my mind, I could still hear his cry, still feel his little hand gripping my hair. Of course, it was all a fantasy. The next thing I knew, I was being carried back to my room by the nurses, having cried myself into a dead faint. I don’t know how many times I wept in that room. It was only when the police came to ask about the details of the accident that I found my voice again. “It was them!” I screamed. “They said it would be cheaper to kill me than to pay for injuries!” “Do you have any proof?” I shook my head. I had been pinned, helpless. How could I have proof? The officer then told me that according to the traffic cameras, I was the one who had run the red light. Worse, while I was still in surgery, Ethan had already taken the woman, Daisy, on a honeymoon. He had left everything in the hands of his lawyer. When the lawyer saw me, he froze. “Mrs. Thorne! What… how are you…?” His eyes widened in realization. “So, the pregnant woman Mr. Thorne’s car hit was… you?” I nodded weakly. The lawyer sat down awkwardly. When I insisted, for the third time, that he contact Ethan, he finally sighed. “It’s no use. Mr. Thorne has his phone turned off. He said he wants to give Ms. Daisy his undivided attention, to make up for her last birthday, which was ruined.” Ms. Daisy. So, the woman in the wedding dress was Daisy. The one I had only met a few times. His childhood friend, Daisy Shen. Her last birthday? Was that the day I found out I was pregnant? I had called Ethan home. I’d then received a furious call from Daisy, screaming that I had stolen her “Ethan” and ruined her birthday. Even Ethan’s parents had berated me, calling me petty and demanding I apologize to her. It was then that I learned the truth. Daisy’s parents lived abroad, and Ethan’s parents had raised her. Growing up, everyone had assumed she would be Ethan’s wife, their future daughter-in-law. Until I came along. Ethan had fallen head over heels for me, insisted on marrying me, and thrown all their plans into disarray. 3 For that, his entire family blamed me. On our wedding day, Daisy had even attempted suicide. She was revived, but the message was clear. And this time, according to the lawyer, Daisy had wanted a grand, fairytale wedding for her twenty-fifth birthday, with Ethan as the groom. So the whole family had conspired to lie to me. They left me, on the verge of giving birth, at home alone while they all went off to celebrate Daisy’s sham wedding. Even Ethan’s closest friends were there. Everyone knew. And no one thought it was wrong. They all kept the secret from me. Thinking of this, I couldn’t help but laugh. A hollow, broken sound. After explaining, the lawyer presented me with the compensation agreement Ethan had drawn up for the accident. “Mr. Thorne was unaware that the victim was you at the time. This settlement is based on standard legal procedure. Please, take a look…” he said, his voice trailing off. “And this is the compensation claim Mr. Thorne is making against you… of course, since you are currently married, I will hold onto this for now.” I scanned the pages, one by one. The lawyer, trying to lighten the mood, glanced at the baby clothes by my bed. “Ma’am, how is the little one doing?” “Stone dead.” The words hung in the air. The lawyer stared at me, stunned. I finished reading and tossed the file aside. “I reject all of these terms. I will be filing a lawsuit. You may leave.” Not long after the lawyer left, my phone, against all odds, rang. I thought it was the lawyer, that he had finally reached Ethan. I answered, only to hear Daisy’s voice. “Sister-in-law,” she chirped, “I just made a birthday wish, and Ethan promised he would make it come true. Can you guess what it was?” I didn’t answer. She chuckled softly. “What’s wrong? Are you sad your baby died?” In that instant, every hair on my body stood on end. She knew. She knew it was me. “I knew it was you all along,” she purred. “That’s why I deliberately called Ethan away. It’s what you deserve for ruining my last birthday. Besides, if Ethan really loved you, why wouldn’t he answer your messages? Why wouldn’t he pick up your calls?” Just as she finished, another voice came from her end of the line. It was Ethan. “Daisy, I have to go back. Your sister-in-law is pregnant, and I’m worried about her. Especially after… after hitting that woman. I just have this bad feeling.” “Ethan, just one more day. Please? Are you going to abandon your Daisy?” I heard Ethan hesitate. I hung up the phone. A day later, I was lying in my hospital bed, waiting for the doctor’s check-up, when I heard a commotion outside. Ethan was back. He was with his parents. “Son, you’re finally back! Can we turn our phones back on now?” “You have no idea, the baby of that woman you hit was torn to pieces. I was so worried something had happened to Chloe, but I was afraid to call and ruin your plans. I’ve been waiting for so long.” “I wonder what kind of soulless thing that woman’s family did for her baby to die so horribly, born without its limbs.” As his mother’s words faded, I pushed open my door. “Yes,” I said, my voice echoing in the hallway. “I wonder what kind of soullless thing they did, for the baby to be born without limbs, with his intestines spilling out…” 4 The moment our eyes met, Ethan froze. After repeatedly confirming with the doctors and nurses that the pregnant woman he had run over again and again was, in fact, me, he suddenly collapsed to his knees. His parents, who had just been mocking me for losing my child, calling it my karma, went visibly pale with shock when they realized that child was the grandchild they had been so eagerly awaiting. Ethan was a crumpled heap on the floor. It took a sedative injection to get him calm enough to lie down. “I didn’t know it was you,” he whispered, trying to take my hand. “I… I really didn’t know.” He stammered, but that was all he could manage to say. He didn’t know. Right. He hadn’t even bothered to look. When I was on the ground, begging for help, he was the one who suggested running me over. And now he wanted to pass it all off as a tragic accident. His eyes were red-rimmed as he slowly pushed himself up. He looked at me. “Chloe, at the time, I was just thinking of the simplest solution. It wasn’t that I actually wanted you to die. You used to be a lawyer, you know how these things work, car accidents…” He trailed off, unable to finish the sentence. Yes. As a lawyer, I knew he had made a calculated decision. But he saw that I was pregnant, and he still made that choice. He ran me over without a shred of mercy, even as I screamed for help, even as I begged. I remembered it all. It was seared into my brain, a memory I could never erase. His parents sat nearby, their eyes now filled with a simmering resentment directed at me. Ethan’s mother spoke first. “Can’t you even carry a baby properly? Ethan is gone for one week, and you manage to screw everything up, even get the baby killed. Chloe! Our family is cursed to have a daughter-in-law like you.” “We were just helping Daisy celebrate her birthday. We were gone for a short time, and you deliberately cause trouble. Tell me, did you do this on purpose? Did you want to use the baby to punish us?” Her words twisted everything, placing all the blame on my shoulders. Their celebrating with Daisy was perfectly reasonable, but my losing the baby was a malicious act on my part. “Was it just a celebration?” I asked, my eyes locked on Ethan. A fresh love bite was visible on his neck, not even bothering to be concealed. The ring on his finger wasn’t our wedding band. He fumbled with it, trying to pull it off, but it was stuck. Just then, Daisy burst into the room. She rushed to Ethan’s side, pressing his hand down to stop him from removing the ring.
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