Chapter 5 — The Ambulance Ride
Paramedics arrived within minutes.
Vanessa cried that she was losing the baby.
Nathan tried to enter the ambulance, but she stopped him.
“No,” she whispered. “I can’t look at you after what your son did.”
Ethan stepped closer.
“I saw the packet.”
Vanessa stared at him.
“What packet?”
“The one under your dress.”
One of the paramedics looked between them.
“Sir, we need space.”
The ambulance doors closed.
Margaret turned on Ethan.
“If anything happens to that child—”
“There is no child.”
Nathan grabbed Ethan’s shoulders.
“That’s enough.”
“I saw the fake stomach move!”
“You caused a scene in front of everyone.”
“I was trying to save our family!”
Nathan released him.
The pain in Ethan’s face struck him harder than any accusation.
Before Nathan could speak, Claire entered the mansion with Rebecca and Daniel Ruiz.
Claire had received Ethan’s emergency message.
“What happened?” she asked.
Margaret pointed at Ethan.
“Your son attacked a pregnant woman.”
“I didn’t touch her,” Ethan said.
Ruiz looked at the bloodstained carpet.
Then at the pins.
He placed one in a small evidence bag.
Nathan stared at Claire.
“Why is a private investigator here?”
“Because Westbridge Women’s Center has never employed Vanessa’s doctor.”
The room went silent again.
Nathan’s expression changed.
“What?”
Rebecca stepped forward.
“I called the clinic myself. Dr. Martin Vale does not exist there.”
Margaret shook her head.
“There must be a mistake.”
Ruiz opened a folder.
“There isn’t.”
He explained that the ultrasound image had been taken from a parenting website posted four years earlier.
The original belonged to a woman in Oregon.
Vanessa had cropped the image, altered the date, and added her name.
Nathan sat down heavily.
“Why would she do this?”
Ruiz looked at him.
“That’s what we’re going to find out.”
At the hospital, doctors examined Vanessa.
She continued to insist she had been pregnant.
But without a fetus, there could be no miscarriage.
Vanessa changed her story.
She said she had already lost the baby days earlier and had been too frightened to tell Nathan.
She claimed grief had caused her to continue wearing padding.
The doctors documented her statement.
The explanation might have created sympathy if not for one problem.
The packet beneath her dress contained stage blood.
A nurse found the torn plastic container near her hip.
When Nathan arrived at the hospital with Claire and Ruiz, Vanessa refused to see them.
Her lawyer appeared instead.
He accused the Hale family of emotional abuse.
Ruiz remained calm.
“Ask your client where she purchased the prosthetic.”
The lawyer’s expression flickered.
Nathan stood in the hallway, staring through the glass door at Vanessa.
He remembered her tears in his office.
Her hands shaking over the positive test.
The way she had described the hotel room.
It had all seemed so real.
Claire stood beside him but did not touch him.
“Did you believe me at all?” Nathan asked.
“I wanted to.”
“I didn’t betray you.”
“We don’t know everything yet.”
Nathan turned toward her.
“You still think something happened that night?”
“I think Vanessa planned more than a fake pregnancy.”
Ruiz’s phone rang.
He stepped away to answer.
A few minutes later, he returned.
“The hotel still has archived security footage because the celebration involved corporate guests.”
Nathan’s breathing slowed.
“What does it show?”
“I haven’t seen it yet.”
Ruiz looked toward Vanessa’s room.
“But the hotel manager remembers something unusual.”
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“What?”
“Vanessa was not alone.”
