Chapter 1: The Sterile Nightmare
“She raised her hand to hit me again, but she didn’t realize that the man standing in the doorway wasn’t just a witness; he was the owner of the hospital, the city’s most feared patriarch, and—most importantly—my father.”
The air in the recovery room was thin, recycled, and smelled sharply of iodine. The steady beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor was the only rhythm in a world that felt disjointed and surreal. My lower abdomen was a landscape of fire, the incision from the emergency C-section throbbing with every shallow breath I took.
Thirty hours. That’s how long I had labored. Thirty hours of contractions that ripped through me like tidal waves, only to end in the cold, clinical rush of surgery. I was exhausted—a bone-deep weariness that made my limbs feel like lead.
