My mother turned sharply.

For the first time in my life, Patricia Parker looked startled to see me.

Then she recovered.

“Oh, good,” she said coldly. “Maybe you can talk sense into your wife. She’s been lying around all morning.”

I dropped to my knees beside Hannah.

“Hannah. Baby, look at me.”

Her eyelids fluttered.

“Ethan?” she whispered.

Her voice barely existed.

Something inside me cracked open.

I touched her forehead. She was burning hot.

Then my eyes dropped to her wrists.

Bruises circled both of them.

Dark, finger-shaped marks.

My stomach turned to ice.

“What happened to her wrists?” I asked.

Courtney looked away.

My mother’s mouth tightened.

“She was hysterical,” Patricia said. “We had to stop her from hurting herself.”

Hannah made a small sound, not even a word—just fear escaping from a body too weak to defend itself.

Owen cried again.

I lifted him with shaking hands. His diaper was soaked. His tiny mouth rooted desperately against my shirt.

“When did he last eat?” I asked.

No one answered.

“When did my son last eat?” I roared.

Courtney flinched.

Mom rolled her eyes. “Don’t start yelling. Hannah kept saying she couldn’t produce enough milk. I told her mothers did this for centuries without whining.”

I stared at her.

“You didn’t give him formula?”

“She said she didn’t want formula,” Courtney muttered.

Hannah’s eyes opened.

“I begged,” she whispered. “They took my phone. They wouldn’t let me call you.”

The room went silent.

My mother’s face hardened.

“She’s confused.”

Hannah moved her hand with painful effort toward the nightstand.

The drawer hung open.

“My medicine,” she breathed. “They threw it away.”

Her postpartum antibiotics. Her pain medication. The iron supplements her doctor had insisted she take.

I looked at the trash can beside the dresser.

Orange prescription bottles lay inside it.

Empty.

My vision narrowed until my mother’s face became the only thing I could see.

“You threw away her medication?”

Patricia lifted her chin.

“I wasn’t going to let her drug herself into laziness.”

Something ancient and violent surged through me, but Hannah moaned, and it dragged me back to what mattered.

I grabbed my phone.

My mother stepped forward.

“Ethan, don’t be dramatic.”

I held the phone up to my ear.

“911,” I said, and my voice sounded like someone else’s. “My wife is postpartum, feverish, barely conscious. My newborn may be dehydrated. I need an ambulance now.”

Patricia lunged for the phone.

I stepped back.

“Touch me,” I said quietly, “and I swear to God, you will never touch my family again.”

For once, she stopped.

The paramedics arrived within minutes, but those minutes felt like a lifetime.

Hannah drifted in and out of consciousness. Owen’s crying grew weaker. I changed him with hands that could barely work, wrapped him in the green blanket I had bought on the way home, and held him against my chest while whispering apologies he could not understand.

“I’m sorry,” I kept saying. “Daddy’s here. Daddy’s here now.”

When the first paramedic entered the room, his expression changed instantly.

He did not ask whether Hannah was exaggerating.

He did not look at my mother for permission.

He knelt beside my wife, checked her pulse, temperature, and blood pressure, then looked at his partner.

“Move now.”

Patricia followed them down the stairs, protesting.

“She’s dramatic,” she insisted. “She’s always been dramatic.”

The paramedic looked at her once.

“Ma’am, get out of the way.”

At the hospital, everything happened too quickly and too slowly at once.

Doctors took Hannah through one set of doors and Owen through another.

I tried to follow both.

A nurse gently caught my arm.

“Sir, we’ll update you as soon as we can.”

“I left them,” I said.

The words came out before I could stop them.

The nurse’s face softened.

“Stay where they can find you.”

So I stood in a hallway beneath fluorescent lights, still wearing my travel jacket, with Hannah’s blood pressure reading burned into my mind and Owen’s weak cry echoing in my ears.

My mother and Courtney arrived twenty minutes later.

They looked annoyed.

Not scared.

Annoyed.

Patricia marched toward me.

“You humiliated me in front of those paramedics.”

I turned slowly.

“My wife and son may die.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snapped. “Women have babies every day.”

Before I could answer, a doctor walked toward us.

She was in her forties, with tired eyes and a steady voice.

“Mr. Parker?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Dr. Elena Morris. Your wife has a severe postpartum infection and signs of dehydration. Your son is also dehydrated, but we caught it in time.”

My knees nearly buckled.

“In time?” I whispered.

Dr. Morris did not smile.

“In time, if there are no complications.”

Patricia exhaled loudly, as if inconvenienced.

“There, see? Everything is fine.”

Dr. Morris turned to her.

“Nothing about this is fine.”

My mother blinked.

The doctor looked back at me.

“Mr. Parker, I also need to ask about the bruising on your wife’s wrists.”

The hallway grew silent.

I felt Courtney tense beside my mother.

Dr. Morris continued, calm and precise.

“The marks are consistent with forceful restraint. Your wife has also stated she was denied access to her phone and prescribed medication. Because there is a newborn involved, I am required to notify law enforcement and hospital social services.”