Part 2Twenty Seven Drops For His First Love

On the day the surgical team discharged me, Adrian came to the room to escort me home.

He knelt on the linoleum to lace my sneakers, his head bowed, before draping his heavy wool coat over my shoulders. As he helped me stand, his forearm brushed my lower abdomen.

A bolt of agony tore through the surgical staples. My knees buckled, and my breath caught in a sharp hiss.

Adrian’s face drained of color. "Did I hurt you?"

"I'm fine," I lied.

It felt like a jagged piece of glass was lodged beneath my skin, twisting with every intake of air. But physical pain was an honest thing; compared to the yawning, hollow ache in my ribs where a child should have been kicking, it was almost welcome.

Near the discharge desk, a young couple was packing their infant into a car seat. The baby let out a sharp, healthy wail, and the father laughed softly, rocking the handle with nervous clumsiness.

Adrian immediately shifted his frame, cutting off my line of sight. "Don't look, Nora."

Before we reached the glass sliding doors, I slipped my hand into my coat pocket, fingering the small plastic hospital band tucked against my ribs. It was the only way my son was coming home.

When the black sedan pulled up the gravel driveway of our estate in Dover, our housekeeper, Martha, came down the front steps, her apron twisted in her fists and her eyes swollen.

"Mrs. Mercer," she whispered. "Oh, thank heaven you're home."

Adrian swept me into his arms, lifting me across the threshold before I could protest. Eight years ago, when he first brought me to this house, he had carried me up the curved mahogany staircase the exact same way. I had hidden my face against his collar, blushing at the staff watching us. He had laughed back then, whispering against my ear: I’m carrying my wife. Let them stare.

Now, held against his chest, every jolt sent fire through my sutures. I felt nothing except the suffocating urge to be put down.

Inside the foyer, stacked against the wainscoting, were four large cardboard moving boxes. Resting on top of the largest box were the disassembled white rails of an infant crib.

Adrian stopped dead. "What is this?"

Eleanor Mercer looked up from the velvet settee in the formal living room. She set her porcelain teacup down with a quiet clink.

"The child is gone, Adrian. Keeping nursery furniture around will only prolong her melancholy. I had the staff box it up. It’s practical."

I pushed against Adrian’s chest until he had no choice but to set my feet on the hardwood. Clutching the banister for balance, I shuffled toward the boxes.

Inside were tiny brushed-cotton onesies, silicone bottles, and the brass-and-frosted-glass moon lamp Adrian had ordered from a boutique in Paris. The glass shade was cracked down the middle.

When I was five months pregnant, Adrian had spent an entire Sunday afternoon on a stepladder wiring that lamp to the ceiling. When we flipped the switch, tiny pinpricks of warm yellow light had danced across the nursery walls. He had held me from behind, kissing my temple, swearing he would take every 2:00 a.m. feeding himself.

I ignored the tearing sensation in my abdomen, bent my knees, and lifted the cracked moon lamp out of the box.

Adrian reached for my elbows. "Nora, don't. Leave it. I'll have the staff take care of it."

"No," I said, wiping the dust off the glass with my sleeve. "He never got to see it. It doesn't matter where it goes now."

Adrian’s hands froze mid-air, his fingers curling inward as if burned.

The guest suite door at the end of the hall clicked open.

Natalie Bennett stepped into the foyer wearing a silk robe, her face waxy and pale, a surgical dressing visible beneath her collar. When her gaze met mine, her eyes instantly welled.

"Nora... I am so sorry," she breathed, her voice trembling. "Eleanor insisted I stay here for post-op monitoring because my apartment doesn't have an elevator. I didn't know she was clearing out the nursery. If I had known..."

Adrian moved instantly, stepping between us to support Natalie’s elbow. "Natalie, Keller ordered strict bed rest. Why are you out of bed?"

She shook her head, tears spilling down her cheeks. "If it weren't for me... your baby would still be here..."

"Stop," Adrian interrupted, his tone firm, protective. "It wasn't your fault. I made the call, Natalie. Not you."

I looked at him.

He had finally said the words out loud. He had admitted, plainly, that sacrificing our child was his choice.

Yet the confession wasn't offered to give me peace. It was offered to shield Natalie from guilt.

Eleanor walked over, sliding an embossed folder onto the hall console. "The blood bank transfer leaked to the press yesterday. The business blogs are calling Adrian a monster who traded his wife's child for an old flame. Mercer Health has two public offerings scheduled this quarter. If this scandal metastasizes, our institutional investors will pull out."

The document was an official press release.

It stated that the blood transfer was an emergency triage decision made entirely by the chief surgical officer based on objective hemodynamic indicators, and that the mother, Nora Mercer, had been fully informed and had given prior consent.

I looked at Eleanor. "When did I ever consent?"

Eleanor’s expression tightened into cold contempt. "Do you want the entire country to believe Adrian deliberately signed away his own child's life? If Mercer Health crashes, Nora, what does that do for you? You’re his wife."

Natalie lowered her head, sobbing quietly. "Please, Eleanor... don't force her. She lost her son. It’s natural that she hates me."

Adrian frowned, his jaw tightening. "She doesn't hate you, Natalie."

He picked up the Montblanc pen from the console, struck a clean line through the clause claiming Nora Mercer had consented, and wrote a substitute sentence in his sharp, slanted hand:

The maternal patient was stabilized prior to the allocation; the diversion was an unexpected, protocol-compliant emergency measure.

He turned and offered the pen to me.

"This clears you of any narrative burden, Nora," he said softly. "You just need to confirm that I didn't know the infant was in acute distress when the surgical team requested the blood. It puts an end to the media circus."

Our child had been dead for seventy-two hours.

To them, he was already an administrative crisis requiring damage control.

I took the pen from his fingers and signed my name on the dotted line.

Adrian let out a long, ragged exhale, leaning down to wrap his arms around me. "Thank you, sweetheart. I know how hard this is."

As he held me, Natalie leaned slightly toward my ear from behind his shoulder. Her voice was a bare, venomous whisper, audible only to me:

"Twenty-seven donations, Nora. But when the knife came down, he still chose me."

I didn't answer. I pulled away from Adrian, bent down, and picked up the heavy cardboard box containing my baby's clothes and the cracked moon lamp.

With every step up the grand staircase, the surgical staples pulled against my raw tissue.

Adrian started to follow me, but a sudden, dry coughing fit from Natalie pulled him back down the stairs before his foot reached the third riser.

Inside the master suite, I pulled my leather weekender from the closet.

I didn't pack clothes. I packed the black Amex cards, the platinum deed folders for the properties he had placed in my name, and the blue velvet jewelry cases.

On the very top, I placed the diamond pendant Adrian had given me on our first anniversary. He had fastened it around my neck in this very room, whispering that Mrs. Mercer would never take it off as long as we both lived.

Now, lying across the cold cardboard box of newborn clothes, the diamonds looked like chips of ice.

Adrian appeared in the doorway, loosening his silk tie. "What are you doing with the jewelry cases?"

I folded the flap of the box shut. "I don't need them anymore."

He smiled faintly, assuming it was grief talking.

He didn't know I wasn't talking about the diamonds. I was talking about the title of Mrs. Mercer.

And the woman who had died on that surgical table.