I hear the nurse’s voice before I see the door open.
“Doctor Herrera, the patient is fully dilated, pressure dropping, fetal distress worsening. We need you now.”
For one impossible, agonizing second, the entire delivery room goes silent around me. The heart monitors keep their frantic beeping, the fluorescent lights keep humming their sterile, insect-like drone, and my body keeps tearing itself open from the inside out. But my own heart stops entirely for a completely different reason.
Because I know that name.
Herrera.
Nicolás Herrera.
The man who once kissed my forehead in the quiet dark and promised me forever. The man who, just nine months ago, stood in the center of our cavernous master bedroom, tossed my packed suitcase onto the freezing marble floor, and told me to disappear before his immaculate reputation was ruined.
The man who never knew I was carrying his child.
I grip the thin hospital sheet until the joints in my fingers scream. Sweat slides down my temples, stinging my eyes. My hair is plastered to my face, heavy and damp, and every breath I try to draw feels as though it is being dragged over broken glass.
“No,” I whisper, the word scraping against my dry throat.
The young nurse beside me—her nametag reads María—leans closer, her brow furrowed in deep concern. “Ma’am?”
I shake my head aggressively, even though the room violently tilts with the motion. “Not him. Please. Anyone but him. I can’t…”
Her face changes. Not because she understands the complicated, jagged history between me and the hospital’s golden boy, but because she understands fear. Real, unadulterated fear. The kind that does not stem from physical pain alone, but from a deeper, psychological terror.
“There is no one else,” María says gently, though her eyes dart to the fluctuating numbers on the monitor. “The other attending surgeon is in the OR with a multi-trauma. Doctor Herrera is the only obstetric specialist available. He is the best.”
The best. The irony tastes like copper in my mouth.
Before I can formulate a protest, a contraction hits. It does not build; it strikes. It rips through my abdomen like a jagged bolt of lightning, severing my thoughts. I cry out, a raw, animal sound, entirely stripped of dignity. I do not care who hears me. I do not care that a dozen nurses are moving around me like busy ghosts. I do not care that I once made a silent, ironclad vow to myself that Nicolás Herrera would never, ever see me weak again.
All that matters is the violent seizing of my muscles and the tiny, fragile life fighting to survive inside me.
Then, the heavy double doors swing open.
The chaotic noise of the hallway spills into the room, followed by the man himself. He walks in, and the temperature in the room seems to plummet.
Perfect. Expensive. Cold.
Nicolás Herrera enters my nightmare wearing his pristine white coat like a king’s mantle. His dark hair is perfectly styled, defying the frantic nature of an emergency call. His jaw is clean-shaven, hard as granite, and the $40,000 Rolex on his left wrist catches the harsh overhead lights, flashing as if to remind everyone in the room that even time belongs to him.
