Wait Until Midnight To Be Born

The pain was a living, breathing thing inside me. By the time my water broke and they rushed me into the maternity ward, I was already dilated to ten centimeters. My body was screaming, violently urging me to push.

But my husband, Harry, refused to let me into the delivery room.

Let me push, I sobbed, my fingers clawing at the sterile hospital sheets. "Harry, please! If I hold him in any longer, hes going to die!"

He just smiled, a terrifyingly calm expression on his face, and smoothed the damp hair away from my forehead. His eyes were dark with an unshakable, irrational stubbornness.

"Just hold on a little longer, Maddie. Once we pass midnight, the moon shifts into a new astrological house. Bellas spiritual guide was very clearany birth before midnight carries a karmic weight that will directly clash with her aura."

He wiped a tear from my cheek. "We can't let our babys arrival destroy Bellas energy. Shes already so fragile."

I opened my mouth to scream at him, to tell him he was out of his mind, but a brutal, primal contraction ripped through me. I could feel the babys head instinctively crowning, fighting to enter the world.

Harrys face tightened. Without a second thought, he pressed his hand hard against me, physically trying to halt the birth.

The white-hot, tearing agony of it knocked the wind out of my lungs. The world went black at the edges.

And in that hazy, suffocating space between consciousness and pain, my heart quietly gave out.

Seven years of loving him from afar. Three years of marriage. It had all culminated in this sickening joke.

"If this continues, we aren't just going to lose the baby. Were going to lose the mother." The attending obstetrician couldn't hide her horror, muttering the words as she hovered helplessly near the bed.

Harrys brow furrowed at the comment.

I felt a weak, frantic kick against my ribs. It was my baby, fighting for his life. I forced my heavy head up and stared at the man I had married.

"Harry... he can't wait until midnight. This is your son! How can you risk our baby's life over a pseudo-spiritual delusion? Over Bella's energy?"

Before I could finish, Harry cut me off, his voice clipped and cold.

"Bella doesn't joke about karma. Shes been through hell. You and the baby just need to endure it for another hour. Be reasonable, Maddie. Hes been in there for nine months. Whats another hour?"

He gestured vaguely around the room. "Ive got the best medical team in the state standing by. Nothing is going to happen to either of you."

He spoke with such absolute, arrogant certainty, completely dismissing the doctor's warning.

It hadn't always been like this. When I first found out I was pregnant, Harry had been a nervous wreck. If I so much as winced, he was on the phone with the doctor. He had an entire folder on his phone dedicated to pregnancy dietary restrictions, terrified of missing a single detail.

But everything changed the day Isabella Montgomery returned to the States.

She was the ghost that haunted our marriagethe untouchable first love. Harrys mother had chased her off years ago, and out of spite, Bella had run off to Europe and married a wealthy tech investor. But the marriage was abusive. She returned a shattered woman, filing for divorce and bringing her trauma straight to Harrys doorstep.

He blamed himself. He believed that if he had fought harder for her back then, she wouldn't have suffered. He owed her a debt, and he was using my life to pay it.

The day we were supposed to take our maternity photos, Bella had looked at the proofs and whispered, Im so jealous. The very next day, Harry canceled on me to take her to a private studio, re-creating the bridal portraits she claimed her ex-husband had ruined.

When I had my gestational diabetes test, the clinic advised bringing someone in case I felt faint. Bella called him away twenty minutes before my appointment because shed scraped her knee at a yoga retreat.

I knew it was his guilt talking. I knew he felt responsible for her. I had naively bet everything on this baby, hoping that once our son was born, Harry would remember the life we were building.

But now, because of Bellas obsession with a holistic psychic, he was trading our sons life for her peace of mind.

A suffocating weight pressed down on my chest. Inside me, the frantic movements grew weaker.

I swallowed the bitter bile rising in my throat and looked into Harrys eyes. "He is suffocating in there. If you let me have him... I swear, Ill take him and leave. Youll never have to see us again. We won't be in your way, or Bella's. Just... please."

Harrys jaw clenched. He opened his mouth, but a soft, trembling voice beat him to it.

"Harry." Bella stepped out from the shadows of the VIP suite, looking small and deeply wounded. "I didn't come back to tear your family apart."

She looked at me with wide, tear-filled eyes. "Maybe you should just let Maddie push. The psychic might be wrong. And even if she's right, and the baby's karmic entry destroys my recovery... it's fine. I can take it."

Without hesitation, Harry pulled her into his arms, oblivious to the blood and fluid soaking my sheets. "Stop talking like that. I promised I would protect you."

Tears burned my eyes, hot and humiliating.

Suddenly, a tearing, catastrophic pain ripped through my lower abdomen.

The monitors erupted into a chaotic symphony of alarms. The obstetrician rushed forward, her face draining of color.

"We are out of time! The amniotic fluid is nearly gone. The fetus is experiencing severe deceleration. We have to move her to the OR for an emergency C-section, now!"

Harry shot a lethal look at the door. Instantly, three men from his private security detail stepped in front of the exit, forming a human wall.

The medical staff froze. The boldest nurse among them stepped forward, her voice shaking. "Mr. Cole, please! The baby's heart rate is dropping. We can still save him if we go now!"

One of the security guards, eager to earn his paycheck, sneered. "Mr. Cole is the primary benefactor of this hospital's new wing. You touch that bed without his permission, and youll all be blacklisted from every medical facility on the West Coast."

The threat hung in the sterile air. The doctors knuckles turned white as they gripped the bed rails, trading helpless, devastated looks before turning their guilt-ridden eyes to me.

With the last ounce of strength in my body, I dragged myself off the bed. My knees hit the cold linoleum with a sickening thud, landing right at Harrys feet.

"I am begging you," I gasped, blood running down my thighs. "Save him."

Harry flinched, clearly unnerved to see me kneeling in a pool of my own blood.

Sensing the shift in his demeanor, Bella tightened her grip on his shirt. "Harry, just let her do it. We can just... avoid each other in the future so our energies don't cross."

Harry knelt and tried to guide me back to the bed. He placed a warm hand on my agonizingly tight stomach, patting it softly, just like he had done a thousand times in the dark of our bedroom.

"Just hold on, Maddie. You and the baby, just wait a little longer for me. Okay?"

"Wait?" My voice was a hollow rasp. "Wait using my sons life as the currency?"

I shoved him away with a feral burst of adrenaline. My hand found the heavy glass water pitcher on the bedside table. With a scream that tore my throat raw, I hurled it at him.

Bella shrieked, throwing herself in front of him. "Harry, watch out!"

The heavy glass grazed her cheekbone before shattering against the wall. A thin, superficial line of red bloomed on her skin.

She pressed a hand to her cheek, collapsing weakly against his chest. "Harry... it hurts."

Harry caught her. When he looked up at me, his eyes were devoid of anything human.

"Are you out of your fucking mind, Madeline?"

I slumped against the mattress, feeling the terrifying stillness in my womb. The frantic kicks had stopped. The struggle was over.

"I'm out of my mind?" My voice cracked, dry as ash. "Harry... he's gone. He stopped moving."

He didn't even look at my stomach. His eyes were locked on the tiny scratch on Bellas porcelain face.

"Bella said we wait until midnight," he commanded, his voice leaving no room for argument. "Stop being hysterical. Bellas injured now, and its entirely because your toxic energy is already trying to push the baby out early..."

He turned his back on me, addressing his guards. "Keep an eye on my wife. No one moves her into the OR until the clock strikes twelve."

"Yes, sir."

He scooped Bella up into his arms, glaring furiously at the frozen medical staff. "What the hell are you standing around for? Do you not see the blood on her face? Get a plastic surgeon down here immediately. She can't have a scar. She hates scars."

Within seconds, the room emptied out, leaving only the stoic guards and two weeping nurses.

I stared numbly at the digital clock on the wall.

11:59.

12:00.

The nurses finally surged forward, desperately wheeling my bed down the hall toward the OR. But it was chaos.

"Where is the surgeon?!" a nurse screamed. "They were all pulled to the VIP wing!"

"The fetal heartbeat is gone! Were losing the mother, she's hemorrhaging!"

"Are you kidding me?!" another nurse sobbed. "That woman had a paper cut on her face, and they pulled the entire obstetrics team?!"

"Tell Mr. Cole! His wife is bleeding out!"

I listened to their panicked shouts, feeling the cold seep into my bones. Any lingering hope, any shred of love I had left for Harry Cole, bled out of me onto those hospital sheets.

I closed my eyes, and let the darkness take me.

When I finally drifted back to consciousness, the world felt distorted. I was lying on the hardwood floor in the foyer of Harry's sprawling estate. Beneath me, the floor was littered with shattered glass from a broken vase.

From the living room, the faint, melodic sound of Bellas laughter drifted through the air, mingling with Harrys low voice.

I tried to push myself up, but my palms pressed into the shards. I looked down. My hands and forearms were covered in tiny, weeping lacerations. Pieces of glass were embedded in my skin.

I didn't care. I felt absolutely nothing.

There was only one thought pulsing in my hollow, aching brain.

"My baby..."

My voice sounded like dry leaves scraping against stone. "Where is my baby?"

I dragged myself toward the living room.

Harry stood near the fireplace. When he saw mea ghost of a woman, soaked in dried blood and shiveringa flicker of something dark and unreadable crossed his eyes.

But then he glanced at Bella, who was sitting on the sofa with a microscopic bandage on her cheek, and his expression hardened into ice.

"You really crossed the line this time, Maddie," he said coldly. "Having the nurses scream for the doctors while Bella was getting treated? You traumatized her."

He pointed to the floor in front of the sofa. "Walk over there and apologize to her. Once you do, well put this behind us."

I stared at him. This man, whom I had loved in secret for seven years, whom I had built a home with for three. He was a complete stranger.

The agonizing pain of the glass in my flesh was a fraction of the agony in my chest.

"You're right. I made a mistake." I swayed on my feet. "My mistake was ever marrying you."

I held out my bleeding hand. "Give me my son. And then I want a divorce."

Harrys jaw tightened. A muscle feathered in his cheek.

"The baby... was a stillbirth."

A high-pitched ringing erupted in my ears.

"What did you say?"

"He was gone before he was born."

"You're lying!" I screamed, my voice shattering the quiet elegance of the room. "You're lying!"

"I'm not."

My entire body began to violently shake. "No... no..."

"Maddie, don't let grief make you irrational." Harry took a step toward me, reaching out to steady me.

I slapped his hand away with a viciousness that startled him.

Annoyance flashed in his eyes. "We can always have another one. Honestly, given how deeply this pregnancy clashed with Bellas aura, he likely would have had severe health issues anyway. Once you recover, we can try again. You can have as many kids as you want."

I stared at him. And then, a broken, breathless laugh bubbled up from my throat. I laughed until the tears carved tracks through the grime on my face.

"I don't want another child. I want him. Give me my son's body, Harry."

He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose like he was dealing with an unruly toddler. "Madeline, calm down"

"I am calm!" I shrieked. "Where is my baby?!"

He looked away, staring at the manicured lawns outside the window. "I already gave the remains to Bella. Don't worry about it."

I froze. The air left the room.

"Why," I whispered, the words trembling, "would you give my dead child to Isabella?"

"Because his karmic energy is what caused the complications," Harry said, his tone infuriatingly measured. "You can't just bury something like that in a normal cemetery. Bella consulted her spiritual guide. They have a holistic way of cleansing his spirit before returning him to the earth."

Bella looked at me with wide, sympathetic eyes that couldn't quite mask the sick, triumphant gleam beneath them.

"Maddie, I really hated to do this. But the guide said your baby held a lot of resentment. If we didn't perform the release ritual, my trauma recovery would completely regress"

"Shut your mouth!" I roared. "What gives you the right to touch my child?!"

Bella shrank back against the cushions. Harry instantly stepped in front of her, shielding her.

"That is enough!" His voice cracked like a whip. "The baby is gone, Madeline! What exactly is this performance going to achieve?"

My heart was already a graveyard, but watching him protect her still managed to twist the knife deeper.

"A performance?" I laughed again, a wet, ragged sound. "Harry, that was your flesh and blood. Your son."

"I know that," he snapped. "But hes gone. Did you want Bella to be dragged down into the dark with him?!"

He's gone.

The words anchored me to the floor. I turned on my heel and walked up the sweeping staircase, leaving bloody footprints on the pristine carpet.

I walked into the nursery. The room I had spent months perfecting. Cream-colored wainscoting. A handmade oak crib. A closet full of tiny, perfectly folded clothes.

I opened the dresser drawers. I pulled out the onesies. The tiny socks. The knit beanies.

I had picked out every single piece with Harry. He used to laugh and say, Im going to give this kid the entire world.

Now, his son was dead, and he didn't even flinch.

I gathered the clothes into a massive pile, dragged them out to the upstairs landing, and flicked my lighter.

I dropped the flame onto the cotton.

"Madeline, what the hell are you doing?!" Harrys voice roared from the bottom of the stairs.

I ignored him, tossing more clothes into the growing blaze. The fire leaped up, casting an orange glow against the walls, illuminating the tiny embroidered bears and stars.

"Shes psychotic! Shes trying to burn the house down!" Bella screamed in terror.

Harry took the stairs two at a time, tackling me to the floor and ripping the lighter from my bloody hands.

The unburned clothes scattered across the hardwood. Harry looked at the tiny, singed socks, and for a fraction of a second, his face went pale. His voice softened.

"Maddie... please. He's gone. Bella's psychic said the next baby will perfectly align with our lives. When that happens"

I looked up at him with dead, hollow eyes.

"There will be no next baby. I am divorcing you. Now, give me back my son."

"I am not signing divorce papers," Harry said firmly.

Bella peeked out from behind him, her voice dripping with calculated sweetness. "Maddie, don't use the D-word just to manipulate him. Its not like you cant have the baby back."

My head snapped up.

She smiled, a tiny, venomous curve of her lips. "Since the dark energy originated in your womb, the guide said you can absorb the karmic backlash yourself. If you do the Penance Trail, you can take the remains."

"Fine," I said instantly, without a second of hesitation. "Tell me what to do."

"You have to walk the gravel trail up to the sanctuary in Sedona. Barefoot. And to show true submission to the universe, you have to drop to your bare knees every three steps until you reach the altar."

"Done."

I stood up and stumbled past them, heading straight for the door.

Harry caught my arm, his eyes lingering on my blood-soaked hospital gown. A flicker of real hesitation crossed his face.

"Maddie, don't do this. The baby is already dead, why would you torture yourself"

I didn't look back. I just pulled my arm free and said, "He may be dead, but he is still my son. And I am bringing him home."

The sun in the high desert was merciless, beating down on my back like a hammer.

Every third step. Drop to the knees.

The jagged, unpaved gravel of the sanctuary trail tore through my thin hospital gown in minutes. The skin on my knees flayed open, leaving bright red streaks of blood on the white stones behind me.

Tourists and wealthy retreat guests paused on the path, pointing and whispering.

"What kind of cult is this?"

"My god, look at her legs..."

Harry walked parallel to me on the smooth grass, holding a UV-protection umbrella over Bella. I saw the muscle in his jaw ticking. I saw the sickening flash of pity in his eyes.

"Harry," Bella murmured softly, leaning against him. "Maybe we should just give it to her. If her bad karma bounces back onto me, youll just have to plan my funeral, that's all."

Harry was quiet for a long, suffocating moment.

"She chose to walk," he said tightly. "Let her walk."

I don't know how many hours passed. By the time I reached the wooden gates of the hilltop sanctuary, I was operating on nothing but the primal, animal instinct of a mother.

Bella stood by the altar, holding a small, linen-wrapped bundle. Harry stood beside her.

"You made it," Bella smiled, holding out a ceremonial slip of paper and a lighter. "You just need to burn the release cipher at the altar, and he's yours."

I ignored her fake, cloying tone. I dragged my bleeding legs to the altar, took the paper, and tried to flick the lighter.

My hands were trembling so violently, slick with my own blood and sweat, that the spark wouldn't catch. Over and over, my thumb slipped.

"Oh, no," Bella sighed in mock despair. "The universe won't let it light. The karma is too dark. I guess it wasn't meant to be."

She looked down at the bundle. "You know the concept of 'dust to dust,' right, Maddie? The sanctuary has a wild nature preserve out back. Leaving him to the earth... it's the ultimate mercy."

A bomb went off in my brain.

She wanted to throw my baby's body to the wild animals.

With a guttural, feral scream, I lunged forward and ripped the bundle from her arms.

Caught off guard, Bella stumbled backward, twisting her ankle and falling to the dirt.

"Get the bundle back!" Harry roared.

Two of his massive private security guards descended on me, tackling me to the earth and pinning my arms behind my back. One of them snatched the linen bundle from my chest.

"Madeline, why can't you just listen?" Harry knelt in the dirt, looking into my manic, tear-streaked face. "Once the energy is cleared, I'll pay for a proper memorial. Okay? We'll have another baby. We can have a whole soccer team of kids."

He sounded so gentle. Like he was soothing a petulant child.

"I don't want another baby!" I thrashed wildly against the guards. "I want him!"

"Stop being dramatic," Bella sniffled, letting Harry pull her to her feet. "Just leave the remains in the preserve. The owner keeps a Cane Corso back there to guard the grounds. Let nature take its course."

Harry scooped Bella up into his arms. He nodded at the guard holding my son. "Take it out back."

He looked down at me one last time, his voice a soft, suffocating blanket. "Just stay here, Maddie. Don't watch. You'll only upset yourself."

As the guard walked toward the heavy iron gates of the preserve, the men holding me let go.

I didn't hesitate. I scrambled to my feet and ran, tearing after the guard like a madwoman.

He unlatched the gate and tossed the linen bundle into the tall grass.

A massive, muscular black dog150 pounds of pure aggressioncharged out from the brush, zeroing in on the bundle.

Without a single thought, I threw my body over the linen.

The dog, thinking I was stealing its kill, lunged.

Its jaws clamped down around my throat.

As the hot spray of my own blood hit my face, the last thing I heard was Harry Cole screaming my name with a sound that tore the sky in half.

"Maddie!"