“Stop blowing up his phone, will you?” the female voice sneered, the words slurred with alcohol and dripping with cruel amusement. “He’s in the shower, old wife. We’re in Maui. Stop being so desperate and let him enjoy his vacation.”
Click. The dial tone hummed in my ear, a flatlining sound of its own.
I did not scream. I did not hurl the device against the hospital wall. I simply walked back into the trauma room on numb legs. The attending physician had just stepped back, his eyes lowered in that universal gesture of defeat. I collapsed beside her hospital bed, weeping onto the back of her rapidly cooling hand. “I am so sorry, Margaret. He isn’t coming.”
That was when the impossible occurred. Her fingers, which should have been devoid of all motor function due to her severe strokes, twitched.
Margaret’s eyes fluttered open. She had heard the piercing, mocking voice of Chloe, the mistress, echoing from the speaker of my phone just moments before. A terrifying, unnatural fire ignited in Margaret’s cloudy eyes. It was not a look of sorrow; it was a look of pure, unadulterated maternal rage.
