Twins. I was carrying twins.

The pregnancy was terrifyingly fragile. At twenty weeks, I had a partial placental abruption and bled so heavily that Thomas drove me to the ER thinking I was miscarrying. He held my hand, white as a ghost, while I lay on a gurney and prayed. Patricia visited the next day. She didn’t ask how I was. She handed me a brochure for local adoption agencies—“Just in case, dear”—and when I looked up, I saw Margaret lurking in the hallway, eyes red from crying.

I called my old court clerk, the only person from my past who kept in touch. “I’m scared,” I whispered. “She’s going to try something.” My clerk, a sharp woman named Donna, promised to keep her ears open and to be ready to send legal backup if I ever gave the word.

On February 12th, a thunderstorm lashed the Georgia coast. I was thirty-six weeks pregnant. I woke at 2 AM with a gush of water and a contraction that made me scream. Lily, now ten and terrified of losing another mother, helped Thomas pack the car while I labored in the back seat, my body convulsing with pain. The forty-minute drive through flooded roads felt like a lifetime. At one point, I looked at Lily and saw her clutching my hand, her knuckles white. “Please don’t die like my real mommy,” she whispered, and my heart cleaved in two.

I promised her I would stay. And I meant it with every fiber of my being.

The C-section was chaotic. I lost nearly two liters of blood. The anesthesiologist had to work quickly because my blood pressure dropped dangerously low. But then, at 4:17 AM, Leo cried out, furious and pink, and at 4:19, Luna joined him, a little softer but just as beautiful. They laid both babies on my chest for a brief moment before whisking them away for checks. But they brought them back to me in the recovery suite, and for one golden hour, I was just a mother, inhaling their newborn scent, tracing their tiny fingers, sobbing with joy.

Thomas took Lily to get breakfast because she was shaking and pale. He promised to be back in thirty minutes. I told him to go. I was safe, I thought. I had my babies. Nothing could touch us.

Then the door slammed open.

Patricia stood there in a lavender suit, raincoat dripping, a manila folder in her hand like a judge’s execution order. Her expression was triumphant, almost manic.

“Thomas isn’t here. Good.” She locked the door.

My arms instinctively tightened around Leo and Luna. “What do you want?”

She opened the folder on the rolling table. The top page read WAIVER OF PARENTAL RIGHTS AND CONSENT FOR ADOPTION in bold black letters. My name was already typed beneath a signature line.

“Sign it, Catherine. You’re too weak to raise twins. You almost died, for heaven’s sake. Give Leo to Margaret. It’s the Christian thing.”

I felt the world tilt. “Get out.”

Her face twisted into something ugly. “You don’t get to tell me to get out. You are nothing. You are a barren, gold-digging nobody who tricked my son. These babies carry Sterling blood, and my daughter deserves one of them. You can keep the girl; we don’t even want her. Just sign.”

I reached for the nurse call button. Her hand shot out and slapped mine away, then she backhanded me across the face so hard I saw stars.

The sting was electric. The incision pulled, and I felt a warm trickle of fresh blood. But more than physical pain, it was the utter evil in her eyes that paralyzed me.

“You think anyone will believe you?” she hissed, leaning so close I could smell the mint on her breath. “I’ve already told the head nurse that you have postpartum psychosis. I am a respected elder in this community, and you are a woman with no past and no family. Who will they believe?”

Then she grabbed Leo’s blanket and started pulling. I held on, my arms shaking, screaming for help. But the room was soundproofed—a feature for celebrity patients.

I remembered the panic button.

My free hand slithered under the pillow, searching. I found the small plastic device and pressed it with the last of my strength.

A silent blue light flashed above the door. Patricia didn’t notice. She was too busy trying to wrestle Leo from my arms, and I was screaming now, a raw, primal sound I didn’t know I had.

Then the door burst open.

Three security guards flooded in, followed by two nurses and a doctor. Patricia instantly released Leo and staggered backward, clutching her chest, her face morphing into a mask of terror. “Thank God! She tried to throw the baby! She’s insane! I was trying to save him!”