Chapter 2 Not According to Plan

(Sybil’s POV)

I ran to a road where I knew that there would be more traffic, waving my arms and trying to get someone’s attention. The hospital wasn’t that far away but it was the middle of the night. 

My father’s smirk was quickly replaced by a look of sheer panic when he turned his head toward the sound of the ambulance. 

He wasted no time in getting into his battered car and speeding away, fleeing the scene of his crime. As he drove by me, he yelled “I will get the money one way or another, you little bitch! You haven’t heard the last of this!” 

I could tell that he obviously didn’t want the paramedics to see that he was the one who had crashed into me.

I also noticed that he wasn’t driving in the direction of the hospital, where his son was dying. That didn’t really surprise me, sadly. I didn’t think that my mother was planning to be by Charlie’s side either.

Just as I was starting to realize that I couldn’t be with Charlie like I’d planned, my knees buckled under me. I saw the ambulance coming closer, and two paramedics rushing over to me. 

The last thing I heard before everything faded to black was one of the paramedics talking. 

The only words I could make out were “bleeding heavily.”

Then the next thing I know, I was lying on a table, and there was a blinding white light above me. Once my eyes adjusted to the light and I was able to see clearly, I saw people hovering around wearing surgical scrubs. I started panicking as soon as I realized that I was in an operating room. “What’s going on? Why am I here?”

The anesthesiologist’s face loomed over me. Her eyes, which were the only part of her face that wasn’t covered up, looked at me with kindness and compassion. “Ms. Smith, you lost a lot of blood. You’re here for an emergency caesarean section.”

“What?” I gaped at her. “I can’t, not right away! It’s much too soon for that!” Tears started streaming down my face. “I have three months left. It’s too early.”

She put her hand on my shoulder, trying to reassure me. “I know this is difficult, but you need to try and relax.”

Easy for her to say, I thought to myself. “What about my brother?”

She gave me a puzzled look. “Your brother?”

“My brother Charlie.” I nodded. “I need to be with him, so he doesn’t have to die all alone! Doesn’t anybody understand that?” 

As soon as I had finished speaking, the anesthesiologist turned and nodded to one of the nurses, who promptly rushed out of the door. 

Then the anesthesiologist turned her attention back to me. “You certainly do have multiple reasons to be stressed right now, Ms. Smith. This will be easier for you if you’re able to relax. However, if you prefer, I could give you something to anesthetize you completely. Would you like that?”

“Okay.” Being unconscious did sound like a good idea, although none of this was happening the way I had hoped. Come to think about it, my life hadn’t exactly been going to plan for the past three years, so why should this be any different?

Three years ago, I was working as John’s secretary. It didn’t take long for us to take our relationship from professional to sexual, and we started sleeping together. 

We were both happy with the way things were. It was just a bit of fun, nothing serious, until he found out that indecent photos of us during one of our trysts were circulating. They were taken by an opportunist tabloid at the worst possible time.

At the time, John was about to become the next CEO of his family’s company after his grandfather retired. His grandfather urged him to marry me, so that if the photos were ever made public, we would already be married and it wouldn’t be a scandal.

We entered a contract marriage that was supposed to last five years. Part of the deal was that we were not to have children, which I was fine with then. We took every precaution to make sure that I wouldn’t get pregnant. After a while, though, I found myself falling in love with him and hoping that our contract marriage would become a real one.

Just after our third anniversary, the photographer came forward and changed his story, claiming that I had paid him to take those pictures in order to force John to marry me. 

John believed him without even hearing my side of the story, and we got divorced. He hated me now.

The scandal followed me everywhere I went, until I finally decided to leave the country for a while. 

Then, during my travels, I found out that I was pregnant as a result of what ended up being my last time sleeping with John. 

That, plus the fact that Charlie’s illness was getting worse, prompted me to return home. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life hiding from my problems. I wanted to be able to see Charlie before he died, and I wanted him to meet his niece or nephew. 

My final thought before drifting into unconsciousness was of how those two things might never happen.