Chapter 12 - Nine Minutes
The baby’s heart rate dropped for nine minutes.
Nine minutes is not a long time unless you are lying in an ambulance listening to a machine tell you that your child may be dying.
“Stay with me, Claire,” the paramedic said.
I stared at the ceiling and thought about every time I had stayed silent to keep my marriage peaceful.
I thought about the chair.
Ethan had not changed that night.
I had simply stopped looking away.
Doctors rushed me into surgery.
Rachel stood beside the gurney until the operating-room doors opened.
“What about the hearing?” I asked.
“Forget the hearing.”
“No. If Ethan takes the company, he controls the medical benefits of six thousand employees.”
“You are not responsible for everyone.”
“My father believed that excuse too.”
Rachel understood.
She went to court.
I signed an emergency affidavit from the hospital bed while nurses prepared me for a C-section.
At 9:04 a.m., Judge Reed opened the hearing.
At 9:11, Rachel presented Lauren’s statement and a preliminary handwriting analysis.
At 9:18, the judge refused to freeze my shares.
At 9:23, my daughter was born.
For several terrible seconds, she made no sound.
Then she cried.
The sound broke me open.
I named her Hope Robert Hayes Parker.
Hope for the future.
Robert for the grandfather who had failed, regretted, and tried to tell the truth before it was too late.
Ethan was arrested again for violating the protective order, but his attorney argued he had entered the apartment because he believed I was in medical distress.
He posted bail that afternoon.
I was holding Hope when he called the hospital room.
“How does it feel?” he asked.
“To meet my daughter? It feels like the first honest thing that has happened to me in years.”
“She’s my daughter too.”
“You nearly killed her.”
“You caused this, Claire. You turned a private misunderstanding into a war.”
“You gave your mistress my chair.”
“This isn’t about a chair.”
“No. It’s about every time you expected me to disappear so you could take my place.”
He was quiet.
Then he said, “The board vote is tomorrow. You won’t be there.”
“I can vote remotely.”
“Not if North Star’s ownership is challenged.”
My grip tightened around the phone.
“On what grounds?”
“You should have read your father’s entire trust.”
The call ended.
Rachel rushed into the room five minutes later carrying a newly filed lawsuit.
A man named Thomas Shaw claimed he owned half of North Star Technologies.
May you like
Vanessa’s father.
The worker everyone believed had died fourteen years earlier.
