The hospital door hastily pushed open, and the doctors hurried over. The nurse saw that Marley wanted to sit up, then hastily pressed her down.
"Whoa, easy there," a nurse chided, her hands firm yet gentle against Marley's shoulders. "You're not doing any acrobatics today." Her voice carried the weight of authority but also the softness of concern.
"Marley, you've had quite the ordeal," the doctor began, peering over his glasses with eyes that had witnessed too many similar scenes. "Your arm... it lost a good deal of blood. And your body? It's screaming for nutrition. Stress—the kind that gnaws at your mind—it's been feasting on you."
"Is the baby..." Marley's voice trailed off, barely a whisper under the blanket of fear that smothered her.
"Fortune's on your side," the doctor replied, flipping through her chart as if it held the secrets of the universe. "You got here just in time. But listen, you need to park yourself in this bed, okay? No detours."
Marley's gaze darted from one urgent face to another, her mind racing along with their hurried steps. Rest? How could she rest when every breath felt like a ticking bomb?
"Discomfort?" the doctor prodded, snapping her back from the precipice of panic.
"Discomfort is my middle name right now," Marley quipped with a hint of sarcasm that didn't quite reach her eyes. They remained wide, glazed with a cocktail of confusion and dread.
"Try to focus on the positives," the doctor encouraged, his tone professional yet bordering on paternal. "You're still with us, and so is the little one."
"Positives," she echoed, letting the word roll around her tongue like a foreign concept. "Right."
"Any pain? Nausea? Anything out of the ordinary?" he pressed, his pen poised like a knight ready to joust.
"Out of the ordinary," Marley mused silently, "is my new ordinary." Her heart hammered a relentless beat, while her mind spun tales of futures uncertain and whispers of hope too fragile to hold.
"Talk to me, Marley," the doctor urged, reaching for a connection beyond patient and healer.
"Feels like I'm the star of a show I never auditioned for," she said, her laugh brittle as autumn leaves. "But pain? It's there—a loyal companion."
"Okay, we'll manage that," the doctor nodded, scribbling notes that seemed far too neat for the chaos that coiled within her.
As they bustled about, adjusting drips and checking monitors, Marley sank back into the pillows, her body betraying her desire to fight, to flee. The world outside that door was a maelstrom, but here, in this bed, she was told to anchor herself amidst the storm.
"Rest," the nurse reminded her, tucking the sheets with an efficiency born of practice. "And let us worry about the rest."
"Rest and worry," Marley repeated, her thoughts swirling like leaves in the wind. "Guess I'm becoming quite the multitasker."
Outside her room, the sterile air of the hospital hallway did little to cool the heat of Oscar's rage. "Damn it, Mother! Why am I here?" Oscar's voice, sharp as shattered glass, cut through the uneasy silence. "After what she did to my Tricia? She could've blinded her!"
Amelia, a portrait of wounded dignity, stood firm against her son's fury. Her expression was carved from ice, her eyes twin chips of sky on a winter's day. "Because, Oscar, even you can't be blind to duty."
"Marley is nothing but trouble!" He jabbed a finger in the direction of the closed door, his anger an almost palpable force. "She's a menace, Mother—"
"Enough!" Amelia's voice was a whip-crack, low and lethal. "Your escapades are one thing, but that spectacle at the party? Unforgivable."
"Mother, I—" Oscar began, only to be sliced off as Amelia leaned in, her words a venomous hiss.
"Marley is carrying your child," she stated, each word deliberate, "and you will not abandon her."
Oscar's knuckles whitened as he gripped the phone, his heart pounding a ferocious rhythm against his ribs. "What do you mean she's pregnant?" His voice was a low growl, barely contained fury lacing each word.
"Go see for yourself," she commanded, tilting her head towards the door. "And remember, Oscar, walls have ears, especially those belonging to your grandfather."
His phone, a sleek symbol of his affluent life, clattered against the floor, its screen splintering like the thin veneer of his composure.
"Impossible!" he bellowed, the word echoing off the walls. "I've never laid a hand on her, Mother. Explain that!"
Amelia's face blanched, her aristocratic features frozen in horror. The matriarch, always so composed, now trembled like a leaf in the gale of her son's fury.
"Three years, Oscar," she whispered, her voice laced with dread. "Three years of marriage and not once? Who then?"
"The baby in her womb is mine."
The voice cut through the tension, sharp as a scalpel. Footsteps, slow and deliberate, approached; each one measured, heavy with intent. The crowd parted for the speaker, the venerable Sebastian Adams at its helm, his presence commanding silence.
Amelia's heart skipped a beat, and for a moment, she forgot how to breathe. "Dane," she gasped, her attempt at a smile more grimace than grace. "You can't mean—"
"Mine," he stated again, as if the single word were a gavel slamming down to deliver an irrefutable verdict.
Amelia, now pallid, swayed on her feet. "Dane, this must be some kind of sick joke." Her attempt at a smile was a ghastly rictus, a plea for this to be anything but reality.
"Joke?" Dane's lip curled, a flash of disdain. "There's nothing humorous about this."
"You're always abroad," she murmured, shaking her head as though to dispel a nightmare. "You don't even know Marley."
"Yet I do, Amelia." There was ice in Dane's gaze as it flicked past her, towards the closed door of Marley's room. "Marley and I are well-acquainted."
Dane's declaration hung in the air, a noose around the neck of propriety. His gaze, a steel blade, sliced through the tension as he surveyed the flabbergasted faces encircling him.
"Explain yourself," Sebastian demanded, his voice a low growl rumbling from deep within. The tap-tap-tap of his cane on the polished floor punctuated each word like cannon fire. "Now."
The corridor seemed to shrink under the weight of the old man's command, and a collective breath was held.
"Grandfather." Dane's voice was devoid of warmth, an arctic breeze that offered no comfort. "I am not a child. My words require no clarification."
Butler, ever the sentinel of calm, intervened with the grace of a diplomat. "Sir, please remember your health," he urged, touching Sebastian's arm with a gentleness that belied the urgency in his eyes. "High blood pressure, sir—"
"High blood pressure be damned!" Sebastian barked, but he leaned slightly into the butler's steady hand.
"Moderation, sir. Dane is known for his control," the butler continued, throwing a lifeline into the churning waters of family discord.
Dane merely compressed his lips, a vise sealing any further explanation. His stormy gaze drifted towards the hospital room, where beyond the glass barrier lay Marley, a ghostly figure amidst white sheets.
Marley's heart drummed a frantic rhythm against her ribs, yet her face betrayed nothing but a deathly stillness. Dane's eyes met hers through the glass—piercing, claiming, shattering the fragile peace she had built. She felt the chaos clawing at the edges of her mind, a maelstrom threatening to consume her whole.