“The man your daughter should have needed less than her own parents tonight,” he said.
Silence cracked through the room.
Even the medics seemed to feel it.
Then another contraction hit, savage and blinding, and the world narrowed again to pain, breath, Ethan’s hand, Ethan’s voice, Ethan here.
The stretcher clicked open beside me.
“On my count,” one medic said.
Ethan bent close, his forehead almost touching mine. “You’re coming with me now.”
I searched his face. “Don’t leave.”
His expression changed—not softer, exactly, but deeper. Like something sacred had just been placed in his keeping.
“I’m not leaving you,” he said. “Not for a single second.”
They lifted me.
Beyond the doorway the rotor wash still battered the yard, wild and loud and merciless. My mother stood with one hand against the counter, stunned into stillness. My father looked as though an entire worldview had cracked down the middle and he had not yet decided whether to call it insult or revelation.
I passed them on the stretcher without another word.
For once, I had none to spare.