Chapter 2 - THE CODE BLUE
"Code Blue! Delivery Room 4! Code Blue! All available trauma personnel to Delivery Room 4 immediately!"
The overhead intercom blasted the announcement across the fourth floor of Saint Jude Memorial Hospital. In the doctors' lounge two doors down, Dr. Marcus Vance, Chief of Trauma Surgery and my closest friend since our internship days at Johns Hopkins, set his coffee cup down so hard the hot liquid spilled over his fingers.
He didn't bother wiping it off.
Marcus had known something was wrong the moment he heard Cameron Bennett had overridden the labor protocol for his own wife. Marcus had tried to enter Delivery Room 4 an hour ago, but Cameron had posted a security officer at the door, citing "physician privacy and patient management."
Marcus kicked the door of Delivery Room 4 open with enough force to dent the drywall behind it.
The scene inside was straight out of a war zone.
Blood was everywhere. It soaked the sheets, pooled under the delivery table, and splattered across Cameron’s white coat and leather shoes. Cameron was on his knees, his hands elbow-deep in the surgical site, his hair matted with sweat, muttering incoherently to himself as he tried to clamp a bleeding uterine artery with a instrument he had picked up backwards.
"Get out of the way!" Marcus roared, his six-foot-two frame plowing into the room like an armored tank. He grabbed Cameron by the shoulder and threw him backward with such violence that Cameron slammed into the stainless-steel supply cart, sending metal trays and glass vials crashing to the floor.
"Marcus!" Cameron scrambled to his feet, his eyes wild and bloodshot. "What are you doing?! This is my case! She’s my wife!"
"You just killed your wife, you arrogant son of a bitch!" Marcus yelled back, his voice booming like thunder in the enclosed space. He shoved his hands into sterile gloves offered by Nurse Evelyn without taking his eyes off Cameron. "Evelyn! Get the rapid transfuser hooked up to her central line! Where is the MTP—Massive Transfusion Protocol?!"
"It's here, Dr. Vance!" Evelyn cried out, rolling a heavy insulated cooler into the room. "Six units of O-neg packed red blood cells, six units of plasma, and a dose of cryoprecipitate!"
"Push it all! High pressure!" Marcus ordered. He looked down at my pale, lifeless face. My lips were blue; my pupils were dilated and sluggish. "Clamps! Suction! Prepare for an immediate emergency bedside hysterectomy and damage control laparotomy!"
"You can't perform a hysterectomy on her without my consent!" Cameron screamed, trying to push past the trauma team that had flooded the room behind Marcus. "I'm her medical power of attorney! She's thirty-four! We were going to have more children!"
Marcus turned around, his face inches from Cameron's. His voice dropped to a low, lethal whisper that carried more menace than a shout.
"If I don't take her uterus out in thirty seconds, Cameron, she will be dead in sixty. And if she dies..." Marcus grabbed Cameron by his blood-soaked lapels, pulling him up onto his tiptoes. "...I will personally make sure the police drag you out of this hospital in handcuffs for criminally negligent homicide. Now get the hell out of my OR before I break your jaw."
Two heavy-set male trauma nurses stepped forward, physically gripping Cameron’s arms and wrenching him away from the bed.
"Let go of me! I'm the attending! I'm Dr. Cameron Bennett!" Cameron thrashed against them, but his strength was gone. His knees gave out, and the nurses practically dragged him out into the corridor.
In the corner of the room, Sophie stood frozen against the tile wall, her green scrubs stained red. She was trembling, realizing for the first time that the drama she had manufactured to gain Cameron's undivided attention had escalated into a catastrophe that would destroy everyone involved.
Marcus caught her eye as he prepped the scalpel.
"You," Marcus barked at her. "Get out. If I see you near this patient or her medical records, I'll have security put you in a holding cell."
Sophie shrank back, turned, and bolted out the door like a scared rabbit.
"Scalpel," Marcus snapped, his hands settling into the swift, disciplined rhythm of a veteran trauma surgeon. "Suction. Keep that blood pouring in. Amelia, you hold on, do you hear me? You didn't survive six years of residency with me just to let this bastard put you in the ground."
Outside in the hallway, Cameron sat collapsed against the cold tile wall, his head buried in his hands. The blood on his skin was beginning to dry, tightening like a mask.
Passersby—nurses, residents, patients' families—stared at him in stunned silence. The revered, golden-boy chief of Maternal-Fetal Medicine was sitting in his own wife's blood, sobbing silently into his hands.
Beside him, the junior nurse holding the baby stepped out of the room, looking around for someone to take the child.
Cameron looked up, his eyes falling on the small, blue-wrapped bundle.
"Give... give me my son," Cameron whispered, reaching out a trembling, blood-stained hand.
The junior nurse pulled the baby back, taking a protective step away from him. Her face was cold, hardened by what she had witnessed inside DR4.
"No, Dr. Bennett," she said softly, her voice laced with deep contempt. "You're in no condition to hold a child. I'm taking him to the NICU under Dr. Vance's orders."
She turned her back on him and walked away down the long, brightly lit hallway.
Cameron was left alone on the floor. Every time he closed his eyes, he heard the metallic CRACK of the bed rail snapping in my hands. He saw the cold, unyielding hatred in my eyes when I spoke those five final words: I divorce you... and I will take everything.
He pulled out his phone with slick, bloody fingers. His hands shook so badly he almost dropped it twice. He opened his contacts, bypassed his own family, bypassed the hospital administration, and dialed a number he hadn't called in four years—the number for Arthur Sterling, the most ruthless, expensive matrimonial and corporate litigation attorney in the state.
"Arthur..." Cameron choked out, his voice breaking into a jagged sob. "I need you. Something... something terrible happened at the hospital."
"Cameron?" Arthur Sterling’s voice was crisp, dry, and entirely lacking in warmth. "It's midnight. What are you talking about?"
"It's Amelia," Cameron stammered, staring at his bloodied palms. "She's... she's in surgery. She said she's going to divorce me. She said she's going to take everything."
There was a brief pause on the line.
"Is she alive?" Arthur asked bluntly.
"I... I don't know," Cameron sobbed. "Marcus Vance is operating on her. He threw me out."
"Listen to me carefully, Cameron," Arthur said, his tone instantly shifting into business mode. "If she dies, you inherit her entire estate, her trust fund, her life insurance, and full custody of the child. If she lives... given what you just told me about DR4, you are facing the complete destruction of your career, your finances, and your freedom. Pray that Vance is a good surgeon, Cameron. Because if she lives, she is going to hunt you."
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The line went dead.
Cameron lowered the phone, resting his forehead against the cold tile floor. The continuous, distant beep of the monitors inside DR4 echoed through the heavy wooden door, counting down the seconds of a life he had so carelessly tried to break.
