— Celeste Maren —
The fluorescent lights above me hummed faintly, a sound I'd long since stopped hearing. My gloved fingers moved without hesitation, guiding the scalpel through layers of skin and muscle with the precision of a practiced hand. Beneath the sterile blue drapes, the patient's abdomen opened like a textbook, and I caught the first glimpse of what I was here for—what I was always here for.
A baby. Crowning in silence. Stuck.
"Fetal heart rate is dropping," said Sarah, the nurse to my right. Her voice was steady, but I caught the tightening in it.
"Cord?" I asked, not looking up.
"Compressed, maybe wrapped. Still monitoring."
I nodded once. "Suction."
The OR was cold, overcooled as always, but sweat was already gathering beneath my mask. My back ached from ten hours of standing. My eyes burned from lack of sleep. But my hands were steady. They always were.
"Let's deliver," I said, with quiet finality.
I reached in and felt the tight loop of umbilical cord around the infant's neck. Not once. Twice. A textbook scenario. A catastrophic one if not handled fast.
"Tight double nuchal," I murmured. "Clamps. Now."
There was no music playing. No soft talk. Just the clinical sound of monitors beeping and the slight rustle of sterile gowns. The world outside the OR didn't exist. Not the family pacing in the waiting room. Not the husband praying. Not the hospital bills or the rising tension in every breath of this woman's labor.
Just me. Her body. Her life. Her child.
One slip, one hesitation, and we would all remember this night for the wrong reasons.
The baby came free after thirty-eight seconds. Long ones. I didn't breathe during them. No one did.
No cry.
My stomach tightened.
"Stimulate. Go," I said, handing off the infant to the neonatal team. "Clear airway, assess tone."
There was movement—rushed, practiced—but all I could hear was silence.
Then, after what felt like a lifetime, the sharp, wet wail of a newborn split the air.
I closed my eyes for half a second.
"APGAR?" I asked, more softly.
"Six at one minute," someone answered. "We'll reassess at five."
Alive. Breathing. Maybe struggling—but alive.
I turned back to the mother, who was still unconscious under general anesthesia. She'd never know how close it came. That was fine. She didn't need to. That was the job.
We saved her. We saved them both.
I didn't smile. I just sutured her uterus shut.
I stripped off my gloves one finger at a time, watching the bloodstains stretch and snap like dried paint. My hands were damp inside. My wrists ached. I peeled off the gown next, folding it inward so nothing touched my scrubs, and dropped it into the bin with a practiced flick.
"Vitals holding?" I asked, not turning my head.
"BP 110/70. Pulse 95. She's stable," said Sarah.
I nodded. "Good."
The baby's cries had softened into the rhythmic hiccuping of a newborn adjusting to breath. Somewhere in the corner, the father had started sobbing—the open, helpless kind of sob that belongs to people who realize they came within seconds of living without someone.
I exhaled, deeply but silently. It wasn't relief. Not exactly. It was more like… survival.
I stepped out of the OR and into the prep room, where the white tile felt colder, the silence more echoing. I scrubbed again. Hot water, too hot—but I didn't turn it down. I watched the pink rinse off my forearms and spiral down the drain.
When I looked up at the mirror, I saw the sweat under my eyes, the red marks where my mask had pressed into my skin, the loose strands of hair glued to my forehead. My gaze didn't flinch.
"How long was that?" I asked without looking behind me.
"Seventeen minutes from first incision to cry," said James, the resident. "Nine minutes on extraction. You didn't flinch."
I nodded again, mechanically. "Call Dr. Abidi in NICU. I want the baby monitored overnight. Cord compression that tight, I don't trust one cry."
He hesitated.
"What?" I asked, finally meeting his eyes in the mirror.
"That was… something," he said quietly. "You saved both of them."
"That was Tuesday," I replied. "Go."
He left. I stayed. The water kept running.
I finally turned it off when the skin on my hands began to sting.
Locker Room – 3:12 a.m.
I sat on the bench alone, back hunched, arms braced against my thighs. My scrubs were damp with sweat and blood, and the thin cotton clung to my spine. The silence here was deeper. No monitors, no crying babies. Just the hum of electricity in the vents and the soft tick of my wristwatch.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw it again—the cord around the neck, the purpling skin, the stillness. That half-second when you don't know if the body in your hands is about to live or die.
People think you get used to it. That repetition builds immunity.
They're wrong.
You don't get used to the idea that one mistake could orphan a child. Or a mother. That your hands, no matter how skilled, still play roulette with anatomy and time and goddamn fate.
My phone buzzed on the bench beside me. I didn't look at it.
Another message, probably. Family member asking for an update. Or admin. Or a friend I hadn't replied to in two weeks.
I reached into my bag and pulled out a book instead. The same worn paperback I always kept stuffed between spare shoes and protein bars: A Kingdom of Velvet and Ash.
The irony wasn't lost on me. A high fantasy novel, full of dueling princes and poisoned goblets and doomed queens.
My thumb hovered over a dog-eared page.
Lady Elira Vaelthorn. The court villainess. The woman who'd let a young queen die in childbirth out of spite and political ambition.
The page was stained from tea. I'd read it dozens of times. I hated it.
I opened to the chapter anyway.
And I whispered, "Do you know how easy it would've been to save her?"
My voice sounded raw, like it didn't belong in this world either.
Because the queen hadn't needed to die. Not in that story. Not in mine.
I leaned back against the cold wall, eyes heavy, the taste of surgical mask still in my mouth.
"You let her die for a plot twist," I murmured. "I could've saved her in my sleep."
The book slipped from my hand as my eyes closed.
And for the first time in a long time, I dreamed.
But not of the OR.
Not of blood or scalpels or suction tubes.
I dreamed of silk.
Of castles.
Of a woman in a mirror who wore my face, but not my name.
And of a voice—cold, royal, and final—that whispered:
"Then wake up… and try."
I left the locker room when my watch read 3:24 a.m.
The hallway was dimmed for night shift. The overhead fluorescents had been switched to soft amber, and the scuffed linoleum didn't gleam like it did during the day. I passed by the NICU doors, where a nurse gave me a quick nod behind glass, then turned left—toward the waiting room.
The walk felt longer than it was.
Outside Room 4B, I paused.
They were there. Three of them. The father, mid-30s, still in a hospital-issued paper gown, dried sweat staining his collar. A woman I guessed was the mother's sister. And an older woman—mother or mother-in-law—gripping a rosary between white-knuckled fingers.
They all stood when I appeared.
The father stepped forward, eyes bloodshot, his mouth trembling as though he couldn't decide whether to speak or scream.
"She's alive," I said first.
He sagged forward like someone had cut his strings. He didn't fall—he collapsed into the nearest chair, covering his face with both hands.
"The baby too?" the younger woman asked. "He—he's okay?"
"Your son is breathing on his own," I said gently. "He's in the NICU for observation. There was cord compression—tight around the neck. It was... close. But we were able to deliver quickly. He responded to stimulation. Cried. Pinked up."
"And Mia?" the older woman choked. "My daughter—"
"She lost a lot of blood, but we got ahead of it. Her uterus is intact. No hysterectomy. She's under sedation now, recovering."
They stared at me like I was something between a miracle and a ghost.
"No brain damage?" the sister pressed. "The baby's brain, I mean—can that still happen later?"
"It can," I said, honestly. "Which is why we're monitoring him. But early signs are positive."
She started crying—quietly, as if afraid even her tears might tip the balance of what had just barely been preserved.
I stepped forward and crouched to meet the father's gaze.
"You were right to push for intervention," I said quietly. "If you'd waited for nature, or refused consent for the C-section, the outcome could've been different. You did everything right."
His eyes met mine, red-rimmed, overflowing.
"Thank you," he whispered.
Not like a phrase. Not like something you say because you're supposed to. But like a prayer. A raw, shattered prayer.
I stood. My knees cracked. My back throbbed.
But none of that mattered.
"You'll be able to see them both soon," I said. "Rest, if you can. I'll check on her in an hour."
They nodded like pilgrims at a shrine.
I turned and walked away before I let myself feel anything.
The sun was just starting to smear the sky with pale violet when I stepped out of the hospital.
The air was cold enough to bite through my scrubs, but I didn't mind. The sharpness helped me stay awake on the drive home—windows down, no music. Just the sound of wind and the hum of the road. I didn't trust myself with comfort. That's when your eyes get heavy.
My apartment was a box on the 12th floor of a mid-rise with bad water pressure and neighbors I didn't know. I threw my bag down at the door and stripped out of my scrubs in the hallway, stepping straight into the shower. Fifteen minutes. Hot water. Then I changed into clean cotton and dropped onto the couch with a bowl of cold cereal and the novel.
The one I kept reading even though I hated it.
An Empire of Velvet and Ash.
Cheap cover. Pulpy font. Badly researched when it came to anatomy, war, and childbirth. But the story—it hooked something in me. A bone-deep reaction I couldn't shake.
Lady Elira Vaelthorn. Court enchantress. Widow. The villainess.
The one who refused to call a physician when the Empress went into premature labor.
The Empress—young, beloved, politically fragile—died screaming on a marble floor while her sister, Princess Seraphine, broke down the doors too late to save her.
Elira watched it happen. Cold. Expressionless.
The book called it her final betrayal. The crown prince called it treason. The people called it black magic.
I called it bullshit.
I flipped to the marked chapter—Page 342—and read the passage again.
"Let her die," Elira said, unmoved by the blood. "Better one womb perish than a dynasty fracture."
I closed the book with a snap.
"She had a complete placenta previa," I muttered aloud. "The baby was transverse. The Empress bled out because you didn't lift a damn finger."
My spoon clinked against the ceramic bowl. Uneaten cereal. Soggy.
I wasn't angry because Elira was evil.
I was angry because the book made her evil for being realistically negligent, not magically malicious. If she'd cast a spell, fine. If she'd held a dagger, I'd believe it. But she let a woman die for nothing but narrative shock value. No one even asked what the Empress's vitals were before she started hemorrhaging.
And Seraphine—God, I liked her. Fierce. Intelligent. The one woman in the court who actually felt the loss. Who cried not for politics, but for her sister. Who held the newborn, half-orphaned prince and vowed to raise him in her sister's memory.
The novel tried so hard to make her the foil. The soft one. The breakable one.
But I saw it.
Seraphine had steel in her bones.
I leaned back, one arm draped across my forehead, and stared at the ceiling.
"If I were there," I said, quietly, "she wouldn't have died."
It wasn't pride. It was fact. A skilled OB, a clean surgical room, and five minutes. That's all it would've taken.
But the world of the novel didn't believe in doctors.
It believed in drama.
My eyes burned. I hadn't slept in almost 36 hours. The book slid from my fingers to the floor. I barely registered the soft thud.
The light grew thin through the blinds. Somewhere, a neighbor's alarm went off.
But I didn't hear it.
I was already slipping under.
And in that half-waking moment between dreams and exhaustion, I felt something strange—
The warmth of velvet beneath my fingers. The scent of myrrh. And a voice—familiar but distant—whispering from behind my eyes:
"Let her die."
And then—
"No."
"Not this time."
End of chapter 1...