Chapter 5 - THE ACTRESS AND THE EMPTY WARD
"Emily! Get in the car!"
My father’s shout snapped me out of my shock. He was standing by the open door of Nathan’s SUV. Caroline was sprawled across the backseat, moaning loudly, her face buried in her hands.
I ran to the car, my mind spinning violently. Theatrical blood. An actress. A plane ticket.
I climbed into the front passenger seat. Nathan threw the car into drive and we tore out of the hotel parking lot, tires squealing against the pavement.
"Hang on, Caroline!" Nathan yelled, checking the rearview mirror in a panic. "We're five minutes from St. Catherine's!"
I turned around in my seat. I looked at Caroline.
She was still thrashing, clutching her stomach. But I noticed something. The blood on her dress hadn't oxidized. It was too bright, too perfectly crimson. And there was no metallic smell of copper in the car. There was only the faint, sweet scent of corn syrup.
"Dad," I whispered, reaching back to touch his knee.
My father looked at me. I handed him the one-way plane ticket to Paris from Caroline's purse.
Dad’s eyes scanned the ticket. He looked at the fake blood. His thirty-six years of hospital experience caught up in a fraction of a second. His expression went dangerously blank.
He didn't say a word. He just slowly moved his hand and locked the rear passenger doors from the master switch on the armrest.
"Turn here!" Nathan shouted, swerving the heavy SUV around a corner, running a red light. "The emergency room entrance is right there!"
Nathan slammed on the brakes, skidding to a halt under the glowing red ER awning of St. Catherine's Medical Center.
"Help us!" Nathan screamed, throwing his door open and running toward the paramedics standing near an ambulance. "My fiancée is losing our baby!"
Fiancée. The word tasted like ash in my mouth.
As Nathan ran inside with the paramedics, my father calmly unbuckled his seatbelt. He turned to Caroline, who was keeping up her moaning act perfectly.
"You can stop now, sweetheart," Dad said, his voice entirely devoid of warmth.
Caroline froze. She peeked through her fingers.
Dad held up the plane ticket. "Your flight leaves at 6:00 PM. But I promise you, you will be in a police interrogation room long before boarding."
Caroline dropped her hands. The pained expression vanished instantly, replaced by a hardened, cynical glare. She sat up, wiping the fake blood off her hands with a wet wipe from her pocket.
"You're smart, old man," Caroline sneered, her voice completely different—no longer the timid, crying assistant. "But Margaret paid me two hundred grand to play a role, and I played it. My job is done."
"What was the role?" I demanded, my hands shaking. "Why pretend to miscarry in front of all those people?"
Caroline laughed. "Because Margaret needed a public event. She needed witnesses to see Nathan's 'true heir' die tragically. Now Nathan looks like a grieving father, and you look like the cruel wife who stressed the poor girl out."
"That makes no sense," I argued. "Why steal my medical identity if she wasn't really pregnant?"
"To establish the record," Dad answered, his voice grim. "Margaret created a paper trail of a high-risk pregnancy under your name. She established a fake blood type. A fake history of complications."
Caroline smirked. "Bingo. Margaret doesn't just want to divorce you, honey. She wants you declared medically unfit. Or worse."
My blood ran cold. "Worse?"
Before Caroline could answer, the rear doors of the SUV were yanked open.
Nathan stood there with two ER nurses holding a stretcher.
"Get her out!" Nathan ordered the nurses. "Please, hurry!"
Caroline immediately resumed her acting, wailing as the nurses gently pulled her out of the car and placed her on the stretcher.
Nathan turned to me, his face streaked with tears. "Emily, I have to go with her. I'll send a car for you."
"Nathan, stop," I said, stepping out of the SUV. "She's lying. She's not pregnant. Look at the blood."
Nathan stared at me in horror. "Are you insane? She's bleeding to death and you're jealous?"
"She's an actress!" I yelled, pulling the plane ticket and the stack of cash from her purse. "Margaret hired her!"
Nathan looked at the cash. He looked at the ticket. He looked at the stretcher disappearing through the ER doors.
But instead of realization, his face twisted into something ugly and defensive.
"You planted that," Nathan accused, stepping toward me aggressively. "My mother warned me you would try to frame Caroline. You took her purse inside the ballroom!"
"Nathan, use your brain!" my father snapped.
"Shut up!" Nathan roared. "This is your fault, Emily! You stressed her out! If my baby dies, I will take everything from you! I'll take Grace and you will never see her again!"
He turned and ran into the hospital after the stretcher.
I stood in the cold parking lot, the wind whipping my hair, entirely abandoned by my husband.
But I wasn't alone.
My father put a strong arm around my shoulders.
"Let him go," Dad said quietly. "We have bigger problems."
"What problems?" I asked, trembling.
Dad reached into his coat pocket. He pulled out a small, blue velvet box.
"When Caroline dropped her purse in the ballroom, this fell out too," Dad said. "I picked it up before Margaret saw."
He opened the box.
Inside was a small, silver baby rattle.
But it wasn't a Whitmore heirloom. I recognized it instantly. It was the rattle my father had given me on my first birthday.
"Dad," I whispered, confused. "Why did Caroline have this?"
My father's eyes were dark with terror.
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"Because Margaret didn't steal your wallet today, Emily," he said softly. "She stole my house keys."
TITLE: THE EMPTY NURSERY
