Part 3Twenty Seven Drops For His First Love

The press release worked. Within forty-eight hours, the digital outrage dissipated.

Adrian was framed by business outlets as a decisive executive who had faced an impossible medical triage with poise. Natalie was the frail, aristocratic survivor of a tragic genetic anomaly.

Our dead son was reduced to a footnote—a sad, unavoidable casualty of clinical complications.

Three days later, Mercer Health hosted its annual Rare Blood Donor Gala at the Boston Harbor Hotel.

That morning, Eleanor had a courier deliver an emerald silk evening gown to my bedroom door.

"The rare blood program is being re-chartered as a national foundation tonight," she told me over the phone. "The board expects Mrs. Mercer on Adrian’s arm. We cannot have the press speculating that you signed that statement under duress."

I looked down at the waistband of my sweatpants. The staples hadn't even begun to heal. Sitting upright for more than twenty minutes felt like someone was dragging a serrated blade through my pelvis.

"I can't go," I said. "I'm not healed."

Eleanor’s tone iced over. "It’s two hours in a ballroom, Nora. Natalie was on ECMO three days ago, and she’s attending. Don't be melodramatic."

That evening, Adrian stood behind me in our dressing room, carefully pulling the zipper of the emerald gown up my spine. The silk clung tight across my abdomen, pressing the heavy fabric directly against the fresh incision.

A tremor went through my shoulders.

His hands stopped instantly. "Did that hurt?"

"I'm fine."

He caught my eyes in the vanity mirror, his expression tender. "Just stay by my side tonight, Nora. That’s all you have to do."

Eight years ago, when he first conceived of the donor outreach initiative, he had told me the exact same thing: Wherever this company goes, Nora, you'll be standing right beside me.

At the gala, however, the place card beside Adrian’s at the head table did not read Nora Mercer.

It read Natalie Bennett.

She was seated directly at his right elbow, wearing ivory lace that concealed her central line dressings.

My assigned seat was at Table Twelve, in the second row near the media platform.

Eleanor stepped between us with a cool, practiced smile. "Natalie is the ceremonial face of the foundation and its lead recipient. It’s logistically necessary for her to sit with Adrian for the press photos."

Natalie offered a contrite, trembling smile. "Nora, please take my seat. I can sit in the back—"

"It doesn't matter," I said.

I took my seat at Table Twelve.

As I sat down, the reinforced satin of the bodice dug viciously into the lower curve of my incision. A cold, nauseating wave of sweat broke across my collarbone, soaking through the lining of the dress.

On the raised stage, the master of ceremonies took the podium, introducing the new foundation.

A massive LED screen flickered to life behind him, displaying a polished photograph of Adrian and Natalie from their prep-school days, followed by images of them at the Swiss clinic. Adrian took the microphone and spoke with measured emotion about how watching Natalie battle an incurable blood disorder had inspired him to dedicate Mercer Health’s resources to rare blood registries.

The room erupted into polite, thunderous applause.

Not a single person in that room knew that the foundation's original database had been built by hand by me, night after night, in our cramped college apartment.

They didn't know that when Adrian’s seed funding ran out during our second year, I had sold the small saltbox cottage my grandmother had left me on Cape Cod to keep the laboratory payroll clear.

Back then, Adrian had wrapped his arms around me in the dark and whispered, When this goes national, Nora, the world will know we built it together.

Now, the foundation was real.

And the woman standing under the spotlights was Natalie Bennett.

A reporter from the Globe directed a wireless microphone toward the head table: "Miss Bennett, rumors circulated that Mrs. Mercer served as your primary donor for nearly a decade. Can you speak to that?"

Natalie dabbed the corner of her eye with a linen napkin. "Nora is my savior. She carried a tremendous burden for me over the years. I will spend the rest of my life honoring what she gave."

Adrian looked toward Table Twelve, meeting my gaze across the crowded room, and extended his hand in an open, public gesture of gratitude.

I placed both palms on the table and forced myself to stand.

I took half a step forward.

Suddenly, Natalie let out a choked gasp, clutched her sternum, and collapsed sideways against Adrian’s chest.

Adrian’s face went white. "Natalie!"

He scooped her up into his arms, abandoning the microphone, and charged down the stage stairs toward the private exit.

As he bolted past my table, his shoulder knocked hard against mine.

The impact spun me around; the corner of the heavy banquet table caught me squarely across the lower back.

A sickening, wet tear ripped through my pelvic wall.

Warm, thick fluid rushed down the inside of my thighs, soaking through the emerald silk and pooling at my heels.

"Adrian..." I choked out.

He didn't hear me. He didn't even look down. The exit doors slammed shut behind him.

The ballroom descended into chaotic shouting.

It was Adrian’s personal assistant, Miller, who pushed through the panicking crowd and caught my arm.

"Mrs. Mercer!" he gasped, staring at the floor. "You're bleeding!"

I looked down at the dark, spreading stain on the emerald skirt.

A bizarre sense of familiarity settled over me.

On the delivery table, there had been this much blood. And Adrian had run out of the room carrying Natalie then, too.

In the emergency department down the street, the surgical resident had to debride and re-suture the torn fascia. Because my hematocrit was dangerously low, they couldn't administer a full regional block; they gave me a localized lidocaine push that did almost nothing.

I gripped the paper-covered edges of the gurney as the curved needle dragged through torn muscle.

My teeth bit into my lip until the copper taste of my own blood filled my mouth.

Yet the part of me that could truly feel pain had been surgically removed with my son four days ago.

Adrian never showed up.

Miller hovered near the curtain, his voice hushed with embarrassment. "Mr. Mercer called from the surgical ICU. Miss Bennett had an anaphylactic episode related to her new immunosuppressants. He... he couldn't leave."

I reached for my purse, pulled out my phone, and opened the PDF Callahan had sent an hour earlier.

With a numb index finger, I signed my electronic signature at the bottom of the final page of the divorce petition.

I set the effective filing date for three weeks from today.

The exact date my son was supposed to have been born.

On that day, I was supposed to bring him home in Adrian’s arms.

Instead, I would take his memory and disappear from Adrian Mercer's world forever.