Chapter 224

LILY

'It's a girl' was the last I heard, coupled with the musical shrill of my daughter's screams, before I let the unconscious take me.

Now I was awake, faced with the same reality I wanted to escape—the sense of loss washing over me.

He had said he was coming, said he was coming back to me, but now I was just going to accept that he was gone, just like that? And my baby? A few wards away from me—fighting for her life.

It had to be a cruel nightmare. Life couldn't be so unbearable; it couldn't take two people away from me in one week. How could it snatch from him from the daughter he had always wanted?

My heart ached with a pain I had never known before. The weight of my grief threatened to suffocate me as I lay on the hospital bed, my tears staining the pillow beneath my head.

How could I raise our child without having him by my side? How could I find the strength to carry on, knowing that he would never hold our daughter, never watch her grow, and never share in the joys and chall