After My Groom Chose His Wife Over Me

Kian's hand left mine.

Not a release. Not a gentle letting go. His fingers simply opened and my hand dropped through empty air.

He moved before I could process it. Down the altar steps. His shoes struck marble in a rhythm I knew—the same quick stride he used when a client called, when his phone buzzed with something urgent, when the world required him somewhere else.

I stood in my mother's dress and watched his back.

He ran up the aisle. Past the front pews where his mother sat frozen with her program clutched against her chest. Past his business partner. Past the college roommate who'd flown in from Seattle. Past three hundred people who had come to watch him marry me.

Aleyna lay crumpled on the marble like a dropped silk scarf. One arm stretched toward nothing. Her hair fanned across the stone in waves that caught the light from the stained glass windows.

Kian dropped to his knees beside her.

He gathered her into his arms. Cradled her head against his chest. His mouth moved—I couldn't hear the words but I knew them anyway. The shape of her name on his lips.

"Aleyna."

Not Eloise.

The officiant stood beside me with his book still open. His mouth worked but no sound came out. The string quartet had stopped mid-phrase. A single violin note hung in the air, then died.

I smoothed the front of my dress with both hands.

The wire around my ribs pulled so tight I couldn't breathe.

In the front pew, my mother made a sound.

Small. Wet. Broken.

I turned.

Margaret's hand was pressed flat against her chest. Her mouth hung open. The cream shawl had slipped from her shoulders and pooled around the wheelchair's armrests. The oxygen tubes had come loose. They dangled uselessly against her collarbone.

Her eyes found mine.

I took one step down from the altar.

My heel caught.

The hem of the dress—the one the seamstress had let out so carefully, the one that had smelled like lavender and mothballs and my mother's hope—wrapped around my ankle like a fist.

I fell.

The first stair caught my hip. The second hit my ribs. The third drove the air from my lungs in a sound I didn't recognize as my own voice.

I landed at the bottom.

The marble was cold against my cheek. I tried to push myself up. My arms wouldn't hold.

Something warm spread beneath me. Wet. Too much of it.

I looked down.

The white dress was turning red.

The stain bloomed outward from between my legs, soaking through the fabric in a pattern that looked almost beautiful. Like watercolor. Like the roses I'd chosen for the bouquet I'd dropped somewhere between the altar and the floor.

Someone screamed.

I turned my head. Margaret was still in the wheelchair. Still pressed against the backrest. But something had changed in her face. The color. The shape of her mouth.

The nurse was running toward her. Her shoes made sharp clicks on the marble.

"Call 911!" someone shouted.

I tried to sit up. Pain split through my abdomen—white and sharp and wrong. I fell back.

The baby.

Twelve weeks. Small enough to fit in the palm of my hand. Big enough to have a heartbeat.

I pressed both hands against my stomach.

The blood kept coming.

"Eloise!" A man's voice. Not Kian's. Someone else. "Don't move—just stay still—"

Feet thundered past me. The nurse was doing something to my mother. Pressing her fingers against Margaret's throat. Tilting her head back. Starting compressions that made the wheelchair rock.

"No pulse!" the nurse shouted. "I need the AED—someone get the AED—"

I tried to crawl toward her. My arms gave out. My cheek hit the floor again.

Across the chapel, Kian was still kneeling. Still holding Aleyna. Her head rested against his shoulder. Her eyes were open now. She was looking directly at me.

She wasn't unconscious.

She'd never been unconscious.

Our eyes met across fifty feet of marble and stained glass light and three hundred witnesses.

She smiled.

Small. Satisfied.

Then she let her head fall back against Kian's chest and closed her eyes again.

Someone was lifting me. Hands under my shoulders. Under my knees. The movement sent another wave of pain through my body and I heard myself make a sound—high and animal.

"The ambulance is coming," a woman said. Close to my ear. "Just hold on. Just breathe."

I couldn't breathe.

The wire had crushed my ribs into powder.

They laid me on something flat. A gurney. The ceiling moved above me in panels of stone and wood and colored glass. Saints looked down with painted eyes that saw nothing.

I turned my head.

Margaret was on the floor now. The nurse was still doing compressions. Another woman—a guest, someone's wife—was counting out loud. "One two three four five—"

My mother's hand hung limp over the edge of the wheelchair.

I reached for her.

The paramedic caught my wrist. "Ma'am, you need to stay still—"

"My mother—"

"We've got her. We've got both of you. Just stay with me, okay? Stay with me."

But I wasn't with him.

I was twelve weeks pregnant and hemorrhaging on a chapel floor in my mother's wedding dress while the man I loved held another woman and my mother's heart stopped beating six feet away.

I was nowhere.

The doors opened. Cold air rushed in. They wheeled me toward the light.

Behind me, someone was crying. A woman. High and keening.

Not my mother.

My mother was silent.

The last thing I saw before they loaded me into the ambulance was Kian, finally standing, finally looking toward the altar.

But I was already gone.