PART 2 — The Door That Wouldn’t Stay Closed
PART 2 — The Door That Wouldn’t Stay Closed
The second contraction didn’t feel like pain anymore.
It felt like my body was splitting time in half.
I curled on the bathroom floor, gripping the edge of the vanity until my knuckles turned white. The tile under me had stopped feeling cold.
Everything was just… pressure. Heat. Panic.
Outside the door, the wedding music swelled.
Inside the bathroom, my breathing started to fracture.
“Please,” I whispered again, but softer now. Not to Eleanor anymore.
To anyone.
To anyone who might still hear me.
I pushed myself up, shaking, and slammed my palm against the door.
“Help me! I’m in labor!”
A pause.
Then footsteps.
I froze.
They stopped right outside.
Hope flared so hard it almost hurt.
“Eleanor?” I gasped.
No answer.
The doorknob turned slightly.
Then stopped.
A man’s voice came through the wood.
“Mrs. Vale said not to disturb you.”
My stomach dropped.
“I’m in labor,” I repeated, voice breaking. “Please—open the door.”
A longer silence.
Then—
“She said it’s a false alarm.”
Something inside me went still.
False alarm.
I pressed my forehead against the door, breathing through a contraction that stole my vision at the edges.
“No,” I whispered. “It’s not false.”
But the footsteps backed away.
Just like that.
Leaving me there.
Again.
I slid down the door, my hands shaking uncontrollably now. My body wasn’t asking anymore. It was demanding.
The baby was coming whether anyone cared or not.
I looked around the bathroom—luxury marble, gold fixtures, thick towels folded like nothing in this room had ever been used for survival.
And I realized something very clearly:
This wasn’t just neglect.
It was containment.
Eleanor hadn’t locked me in because she thought I was dramatic.
She had locked me in because she believed I was disposable.
Another contraction hit, harder than the last.
I cried out, but this time there was no strength left in it.
And then—
A sound.
Not the hallway.
Not the wedding.
A vibration.
My phone.
Inside her clutch.
I scrambled to my feet, forcing myself to the door, pounding again.
“Eleanor! Please! I need my phone!”
Silence.
Then a voice, faint through the wood.
“You’ll survive an hour.”
Something inside me snapped.
“I won’t!” I screamed. “I am not making that up!”
A pause.
Then Eleanor, calm as ever:
“Everything always feels urgent when it’s happening to you, Mara.”
Footsteps again.
Walking away.
That was when I stopped asking.
Not because I gave up.
Because something else had started.
Instinct.
I looked at the bathroom window.
Small.
High.
But not impossible.
I dragged myself to it, pulling myself up using the sink, gasping through another contraction that nearly dropped me to my knees.
My hands fumbled the latch.
It stuck.
Of course it did.
I hit it again.
Harder.
It gave.
Cold air hit my face when I pushed the window open just enough to see outside.
The manor gardens.
Empty.
Too quiet.
Too far.
But beyond them—
A service path.
Movement.
Someone was out there.
I didn’t think.
I just called out.
“Help me!”
My voice cracked across the night air.
Again.
“PLEASE!”
A figure stopped.
Looked up.
May you like
And for the first time all night—
someone actually heard me.
