The doctor didn’t wait for permission.
“Now,” he repeated.
Zayn followed him down the corridor on legs that barely felt like his own. Every step echoed too loudly, every second stretching into something cruel and elastic. Behind him, he heard Andrea sobbing into Alexander’s chest, heard Lana arguing with a nurse, demanding answers, demanding to see her sister—but all of it blurred into noise.
White walls. Harsh lights. The smell of antiseptic.
The doctor stopped in front of a small consultation room and turned to face him.
“Mr. Specter,” he said, calm but grave, the kind of calm that terrified more than panic ever could. “Your wife experienced a severe postpartum hemorrhage.”
Zayn’s breath left him in a rush. “She—she was fine,” he rasped. “She was talking to me. She was joking—she t
