Chapter 3 - The Shadow of Saint Jude’s
Three days earlier, the sound of the sports car’s engine hadn't even faded from the street before the darkness began to swallow me.
I lay on the cream rug, my cheek pressed against the rough wool fibers, watching the red notification light on my phone blink with a rhythmic, mocking consistency. Every beat of my heart felt like a small, hollow click inside my ears, followed by the terrifying sensation of cold water pouring out of my core. I couldn't feel my legs anymore. They belonged to someone else, a distant memory of a woman who could stand, who could walk, who could hold her son.
Across the room, Ethan’s cries had shifted from the sharp, angry demands of a hungry newborn to a low, exhausted whimper. It was a wet, rattling sound that broke my heart into a thousand pieces. He was freezing. The thermostat was set to seventy, but to my dying body, the room felt like an icebox.
"I'm sorry," I tried to say to him, but no sound came out of my throat. My tongue felt like a piece of dry leather. "Ethan... mommy's trying."
I closed my eyes. The world didn't go black immediately; it dissolved into a gray, featureless mist where the only anchor was the fading sound of my baby’s breath. I knew what this was. My sister had been a labor and delivery nurse before she passed—she had told me about late-onset postpartum hemorrhaging. She had told me it was an emergency that measured survival in minutes, not hours.
I was out of minutes.
Then, through the gray fog, I heard a sound.
It wasn't the roar of Ryan’s car returning. It was the heavy, rhythmic thud of work boots walking up the front porch steps. Then, the distinct, metallic sound of the hidden spare key being turned in the deadbolt of the front door.
I tried to scream, to warn whoever it was that there was no money here, that my baby was in the room, but my lungs refused to expand. The front door clicked open. The footsteps entered the house, deliberate and slow, completely devoid of the frantic energy of a thief.
The footsteps moved past the kitchen, past the living room, and stopped directly outside the nursery door.
Through my slit eyelashes, I saw a tall, broad silhouette block the light from the hallway. The man didn't look like anyone Ryan knew. He wore a heavy, dark canvas coat that smelled faintly of pine wood, motor oil, and the crisp winter air of the foothills. His face was obscured by the shadows, but as he stepped into the room, the dim light from the elephant lamp caught the sharp, angular line of his jaw and a deep, pale scar that ran from the corner of his left eye down to his lip.
He didn't hesitate. He didn't scream or panic when he saw the blood.
In two massive strides, he crossed the room, kneeling beside me. His large, calloused hands came down onto my neck, his fingers pressing firmly against my carotid artery with a clinical, practiced precision. His touch was freezing, but the moment his skin met mine, a strange, electric spark of survival flared through my chest.
"Pulse is thready. Eighty over forty at best," the man said. His voice was a deep, gravelly baritone that sounded like stones being ground together by a river current. He wasn't talking to me; he was talking to an earpiece tucked into his right ear. "We have an inversion or a severe retained placenta fragment. She’s lost at least two liters. Bring the field kit up from the truck now, Liam. We don't have time for an ambulance."
He leaned closer to my face, his dark, gray-green eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that forced my slipping consciousness to freeze in place.
"Emma," he said, his voice dropping into a low, commanding command. "Look at me. Look at my eyes."
I blinked, my focus shifting wildly. "My... my baby," I managed to scrape out, my fingers twitching toward the bassinet.
"My partner has the boy," the man said, his large hand moving from my neck to wrap around my cold fingers, squeezing them until I felt the pressure through the numbness. "He’s breathing. He’s safe. But if you close your eyes right now, Emma, you don't wake up. Do you understand me? You stay with me. Fix your eyes on my face."
Another man—smaller, quick, dressed in a black paramedic’s jacket—rushed into the room, carrying a heavy metal case. Within seconds, the smell of rubbing alcohol and sterile plastic filled the nursery. I felt the sharp, cold bite of an IV needle sinking into my forearm, followed by the sudden, freezing rush of synthetic volume expanders entering my veins.
"We need to move her to the private clinic in Evergreen," the paramedic said, his hands moving with frantic speed as he applied a pressure dressing to my lower abdomen. "The roads are freezing over, Gabriel. If the state patrol sees the truck—"
"The state patrol doesn't see my trucks, Liam," the first man—Gabriel—said. He reached down and slid his massive arms beneath my back and knees, lifting my dead weight off the blood-soaked carpet as effortlessly as if I were a child.
May you like
As he pulled me against his chest, the heavy canvas of his coat scraped against my cheek. Tucked into the inner lining, hidden from the world but perfectly visible to me, was a heavy, silver medallion bearing the image of Saint Jude—the patron saint of lost causes.
"Hold onto your boy, Emma," Gabriel whispered into my hair as he carried me out into the freezing Colorado night. "The world you lived in is over. Let it burn."
