He walked out. The heavy mahogany front door slammed shut, vibrating through the floorboards. A few seconds later, the guttural roar of his sports car engine revved to life, tearing down the driveway and fading into a suffocating silence that felt terrifyingly like a death knell.
I was completely alone.
I tried to drag myself upward, reaching desperately for my phone sitting on the edge of the changing table, but my legs finally gave out. They turned to lead, buckling beneath me. As I hit the floor, the impact forced the remaining air from my lungs. A dark, terrifyingly warm pool began to spread rapidly beneath me, soaking into the pristine cream-colored rug.
My eyelids felt impossibly heavy. The world was shrinking to the size of a pinhole. But just before the darkness swallowed me completely, the phone on the table above vibrated, dropping to the floor beside my face. The screen lit up with a notification, glowing bright against the dimming room.
Mark Vance just added to his story: “Resort Bound! 
”
2. The Split Screen
Time lost its shape. I was trapped in a liminal space between the agonizing, pulsing pain in my pelvis and a creeping, numb coldness that started in my fingertips and toes, slowly marching toward my heart.
Above me, in his bassinet, Leo began to cry. It was a hungry, frantic wail that usually would have had me on my feet in seconds. Now, it just echoed in my ears like a siren I couldn’t reach. I tried to speak, to soothe him, to shout for a neighbor, but my throat was parched sand. My lips moved, but no sound came out. I lay there in a massive pool of my own blood, my vision tunneling, my heart rate fluttering erratically like a dying bird’s wing trapped behind my ribs.
While my life was physically draining out of me onto the nursery floor, sixty miles away, my husband was breathing in the crisp, pine-scented air of the mountains.
Through the sickening haze of my fading consciousness, the phone next to my face chimed again. The screen automatically woke, playing the video Mark had just posted.
He was standing on a sprawling cedar balcony overlooking a breathtaking, snow-capped valley. He was laughing, a crystal glass of eighteen-year-old scotch catching the afternoon sunlight in his hand. Two of his fraternity brothers were cheering in the background.
“Shout out to all the guys out there who know what it’s like to deal with a ‘high-maintenance’ wife,” Mark chuckled into the camera, his teeth perfectly white, his eyes devoid of anything resembling a soul. “Sometimes you just gotta choose yourself, you know? Self-care, boys. Happy birthday to me.”
The video looped. Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to me.
The juxtaposition was a physical blow, heavier than the hemorrhage. He was toasting to his freedom while the woman who had just torn her body apart to give him a child was bleeding to death in the house he paid for.
My eyes rolled back. The cold reached my chest. Leo’s cries had turned to weak, exhausted whimpers. I closed my eyes, resigning myself to the terrifying void of narcissistic negligence I had somehow mistaken for love.
But then, a sharp, metallic sound pierced the encroaching silence.
It was the sound of a spare key violently turning in the front lock. Heavy, frantic footsteps pounded against the hardwood of the hallway.
“Elara?!” a voice screamed.
