Chapter 6 - The Escalation
The air in Room 412 completely solidified.
I sat frozen on the hospital bed, staring at my father’s face, desperately searching for a punchline, a sign of severe cognitive decline, a cruel joke—anything that would make this moment make sense. But there was nothing. Only Steven Collins’ cold, uncompromising conviction.
"Are you... are you insane?" I breathed out, the words tumbling out of my mouth in a disbelieving gasp. "Did you actually just ask me to give away one of my newborn babies?"
My mother stepped forward rapidly, waving her hands in a soothing, placating motion. "Now, Allison, sweetie, don't get hysterical. Just hear them out! Think about it rationally. Three babies is too much for anyone! It’s overwhelming! If you give one to Eric and Vanessa, everybody wins! They get the child they’ve been praying for, and you get a manageable life!"
"Hear them out?!" I screamed, the stitches across my lower abdomen searing with white-hot pain as my body tensed violently. "Are you out of your minds?! These are my children! Ryan’s and my children! They aren't spare auto parts! They aren't extra furniture!"
Vanessa stepped up to the edge of my bed, her eyes burning with an unhinged, dangerous intensity. "You don't even need three, Allison!" she hissed, her voice cracking with suppressed rage. "You didn't even try for four years like I did! You just got lucky! It’s not fair that you get three in one go while I have an empty nursery! It’s greedy!"
"Greedy?!" I spat back, tears of absolute outrage bursting from my eyes. "Eric, say something! Tell your wife she’s insane! Tell Dad he’s lost his mind!"
Eric shifted his weight, looking at the wall, his voice small and pathetic. "I mean... Allison... Dad kind of has a point. You guys are going to be so stressed out. We’d take great care of him. It’d still be in the family. You’d see him at Thanksgiving..."
I looked from my brother’s weak, cowardly face, to my mother’s anxious, enabling smile, to my sister-in-law’s predatory glare, and finally to my father, who sat there like a king deciding the distribution of property.
"Get out," I said, my voice trembling with a terrifying, absolute fury. "All of you. Get out of my room right now."
My father’s face darkened. His jaw set into a hard, dangerous line. He hated being disobeyed. He hated losing control.
"Don't take that tone with me, Allison," Dad commanded, standing up from his chair, using his height to loom over my bed. "We are trying to solve a family problem. You are being profoundly selfish. You have always been self-centered, thinking you’re better than your brother just because your life turned out easier."
"I am asking you to leave my hospital room before I call security!" I shouted, reaching for the bedside control panel.
Before my hand could reach the cord, the door to the room clicked open again.
A young pediatric nurse rolled a clear, acrylic medical bassinet into the room. Inside, swaddled in a pink-and-blue striped hospital blanket, lay tiny Leo.
"Hi, Mom!" the nurse said brightly, completely unaware of the poison choking the room. "The NICU doctor cleared Baby A to come do some skin-to-skin contact with you for thirty minutes before his next feeding!"
Vanessa let out a sharp, audible gasp.
My heart violently hammered against my ribs. "Nurse—" I tried to say, but before I could finish, my father took three swift steps, intercepting the nurse beside the bassinet.
"Oh, perfect," my father said smoothly, offering the nurse a warm, professional smile. "We were just waiting to hold him."
"Dad, don't touch him!" I screamed, struggling to swing my numb, surgically repaired legs over the edge of the bed. "Nurse, call security! Get them out!"
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The nurse blinked, her bright smile instantly vanishing as she realized the room was a battleground. "Sir, please step back. Only the mother—"
Ignoring the nurse completely, Steven Collins reached down into the plastic bassinet. With practiced, smooth efficiency, he slid his hands beneath my swaddled newborn son, lifted Leo into the air, and turned directly toward Vanessa.
