My Don Left Me in Labor for Her Comeback Chapter 04

My Don Left Me in Labor for Her Comeback Chapter 04

The Mount Sinai emergency team kicked through the side door at 21:52.

They found me sitting in a pool of my own blood, performing CPR on a newborn who had never seen light, never heard his mother’s voice, never heard any voice ever.

“Dr. DeLuca – let us take over — ” Maya was pulling me back.

I watched them work on him.

They loaded him onto a transport incubator.

His tiny fist, blue and motionless, was the last thing I saw before my vision narrowed to a pinhole

and my legs gave out.

Someone caught me. “Dr. Okafor, She’s hemorrhaging – get two lines in, type and crossmatch -”

“Where’s the husband?” someone else asked.

Maya’s voice, bitter as ash: “Third row center. He’s turning pages.

In the ambulance, I grabbed Maya’s hand and pulled her close.

My voice was a thread.

“The duty log. The FDNY box. Evidence for the lawyers. My prenatal file – do not let the hospital

give it to Massimo. I’m revoking his access. Tell Helen to start the paperwork.”

Maya nodded, tears cutting tracks through the blood on her face.

“And Maya?” I whispered, as the siren began to wail.

“If my son dies tonight – I want Massimo DeLuca to remember, for the rest of his miserable life,

that he chose an encore over his child’s first breath.”

I signed two documents in the ER.

The first: consent for emergency hysterectomy.

“Uterine artery ligation failed we have to remove the uterus to save her life,” Dr. Okafor’s voice was steady but her hands were shaking.

No family member to sign. Massimo was taking his bow backstage.

i picked up the pen

–

my fingers still tacky with dried blood

–

and pressed my thumbprint onto

the consent form myself.

My signature beneath it, jagged but legible: Serafina DeLuca, MD.

The second document: emergency marital asset injunction and revocation of spousal medical authority.

I transferred all decision-making power to my mother in Sicily and to Maya Chen as my healthcare proxy.

Massimo DeLuca was stripped of the right to know my diagnosis, my room number, my prognosis, or whether I was dead or alive.

Then the propofol hit my veins, cold and white, and the world folded up into nothing.

Take it out.

Cut out every soft part, every hopeful organ, everything that ever belonged to Massimo DeLuca.

While my uterus was being removed in an OR on the Upper East Side, Carnegie Hall’s curtain was falling.

Violetta St. Claire stood in a spotlight, tears streaming, accepting twelve minutes of standing ovation.

Massimo stood in the wings, clutching her page-turned score, a quiet smile on his face.

He had done it.

He had repaid his debt.

Her father Antonio, the capo who took three bullets meant for young Massimo during the ’14 war his daughter was restored to glory.

The guilt he’d carried for five years was finally scrubbed clean.

He was a good man.

A man of honor.

He had honored his debt to the dead, without letting his family down.

Sera was so capable.

She would have gotten to the hospital, delivered a healthy baby boy, and by the time he got there with celebratory champagne, she’d have smiled and said, “How was the concert?”

That was the script in his head.

Seven years of her quiet competence had taught him that Sera needed nothing from anyone.

The interview ended.

Violetta’s publicist tried to pull him toward the press line –

– but he waved them off.

“My wife’s in labor. I have to go.”

“Don Massimo! A photo with Violetta/

He walked toward the VIP lane, program still tucked under his arm, humming the last bars of

Paganini.

“Tesoro sorry to keep you waiting-”

His voice died in his throat.

service lane was empty.

No Maserati.

No wife.

Just yellow crime-scene tape stretched across the asphalt.

A dark, spreading stain on the ground where the car had been.

A trail of blood leading from the parking spot to the side door.

A piece of paper, trampled, fluttering against the police tape in the June breeze.

Massimo picked it up.

It was a Mount Sinai Hospital critical condition notice

the carbon copy.

Two names: Mother: Serafina DeLuca, MD. Newborn; Male DeLuca. Status: CRITICAL.

On the back, in handwriting he would have recognized anywhere the precise, clinical cursive of

his wife – one line:

EVIDENCE PRESERVED. PARTIES: MASSIMO DELUCA, VIOLETTA ST. CLAIRE, CARNEGIE HALL.

LEGAL ACTION INITIATED.

The

program slipped from under his arm and landed in the bloodstain.