Chapter 2 - Thirty-One Calls
“Where is she?” he asked.
No one answered.
That frightened him more than accusation would have.
Mark turned back to Lauren.
“I said where is my wife?”
Lauren’s expression did not change.
“Your wife asked that no information be released without authorization.”
“I am her husband.”
“Yes,” Lauren said. “We were aware of that when we called you thirty-one times.”
A nurse behind the desk looked up.
Dr. Naomi closed her eyes briefly.
Mark’s jaw worked.
“I was in meetings.”
Lauren looked at the dark phone in his hand.
“For four days?”
His grip tightened around it.
“My phone died.”
Naomi finally spoke.
“Then charge it.”
Mark looked at her.
She had said it quietly.
Not sarcastically.
That made it worse.
Mark and Naomi shared a last name because they shared a father.
But they had not shared values in a long time.
Naomi was Mark’s older half-sister, though Mark hated that word. Half sounded incomplete, and Mark had built his life around appearing whole.
Their father, Richard Carter, had married Naomi’s mother young, divorced her coldly, married Mark’s mother wealthy, and spent the next thirty years teaching both children that public success mattered more than private damage.
Naomi became a surgeon.
Mark became a developer.
Their father praised Mark louder.
Naomi noticed more.
That was why Emily had called her eight months into the pregnancy.
Not because they were close.
They were not.
Naomi had always been polite to Emily, kind in a distant way, but Mark controlled family relationships like he controlled everything else. He decided who visited. Who knew what. Who was “helpful.” Who was “stressful.” Who was “trying to interfere.”
Naomi had noticed Emily getting smaller.
Not physically.
Emotionally.
A woman carrying triplets should have taken up every room she entered.
Emily apologized for needing chairs.
For eating slowly.
For falling asleep during dinner.
For asking Mark to drive at night.
For existing in a body doing impossible work.
Mark called it “high-maintenance nesting.”
Naomi called her once afterward.
“You don’t have to apologize for needing support.”
Emily had gone quiet.
Then whispered, “I know.”
But she said it like someone trying to remember a language.
The triplets had not been planned.
Not naturally.
Not accidentally either.
Mark wanted children once he decided children would improve his image.
Three years into the marriage, after two miscarriages Emily grieved mostly alone, Mark began speaking publicly about “starting a legacy.”
Legacy.
His favorite word.
Emily wanted a baby.
Mark wanted proof.
When the fertility treatments worked too well and the ultrasound showed three heartbeats, Emily cried in fear and wonder.
Mark laughed.
“Efficient.”
Naomi had been in the room for that ultrasound.
She saw Emily’s face change when he said it.
Efficient.
Three babies.
One word.
Already reducing them to performance.
The pregnancy became high-risk quickly.
Severe nausea.
Bed rest.
Swelling.
Blood pressure worries.
Monitoring twice a week.
Emily tried to stay cheerful.
Mark grew impatient.
He had a major hospital expansion project pending with a private investor group. He wanted ribbon-cutting photos, construction approvals, donor dinners, public congratulations.
Emily’s body did not fit his schedule.
“You’re not the first woman to have babies,” he said once when she asked him not to travel in the third trimester.
Naomi was there.
She set down her fork.
“She is carrying three.”
Mark smiled at her.
“You’re a surgeon, Naomi. Try not to dramatize pregnancy.”
Emily looked down at her plate.
That night, Naomi texted her.
Are you safe?
Emily did not answer for seventeen minutes.
Then:
I don’t know how to answer that without making it real.
Naomi saved the message.
Not to use against her brother.
May you like
Not then.
To remember that Emily had said the truth once.
