Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN IN THE NICU
I tried to climb out of bed.
Pain ripped across my incision, so violent that my vision flashed white.
Naomi caught my shoulders before I fell.
“Rachel, stop.”
“That’s Grace’s monitor.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know.”
A nurse hurried into the room.
“What happened?” I demanded.
“Your baby experienced a brief drop in oxygen saturation.”
“Brief?”
“The NICU team is with her. Please stay in bed.”
“Take me to her.”
“Mrs. Collins—”
“Take me to my daughter.”
Perhaps it was the tone I had once used with hostile witnesses.
Perhaps the nurse understood that keeping me away would cause more harm than wheeling me down the hallway.
Ten minutes later, I entered the NICU in a wheelchair with a blanket over my legs.
Grace lay beneath a clear plastic cover.
She was smaller than I had imagined, wrapped in white fabric with monitoring leads attached to her chest and a tiny oxygen tube beneath her nose.
A nurse adjusted the equipment.
“Her oxygen level has recovered.”
“What caused it?”
“Newborns who experience distress during delivery can have episodes like this. We’re watching her closely.”
I reached through the opening and touched one finger to Grace’s hand.
Her fingers closed around mine.
The rest of the room disappeared.
Derek had kicked her before she took her first breath.
Lorraine had ordered him to do it again.
Yet Grace was holding on to me with more strength than either of them had ever possessed.
“I’m here,” I whispered. “You’re not alone.”
The custody hearing began the next morning while I was still wearing a hospital gown.
Naomi sat beside my bed.
A tablet had been positioned on the rolling tray.
Judge Eleanor Price appeared on the screen from a quiet courtroom, her silver hair pulled back tightly.
Derek attended by video from the county detention center. He wore jail-issued clothing and an expression of wounded innocence.
Lorraine appeared from another room in the facility.
Carlton Voss sat between their screens in his office.
He was polished, silver-haired, and famous for making juries doubt what they had witnessed with their own eyes.
“My client is deeply concerned for his infant daughter,” Voss began. “The events at the residence were the result of Mrs. Collins’s untreated psychiatric instability.”
Derek lowered his head as though overcome with grief.
I had seen him practice that expression before funerals.
Voss presented Dr. Alan Reeves’s affidavit.
According to Lorraine’s brother, I had exhibited paranoia, hostility, irrational jealousy, and repeated fantasies about my husband stealing from me.
The financial transfers were described as delusions.
The physical assault was described as a defensive response after I attacked Derek with a kitchen knife.
There had been no knife.
Judge Price looked at Naomi.
“Counsel?”
Naomi did not raise her voice.
“My client has never been diagnosed with prenatal psychosis or any comparable condition. Dr. Reeves has not treated her for five months and is the brother of one of the defendants.”
She submitted the emergency-room photographs.
Bruising had already spread across my abdomen and ribs.
She submitted the surgical report documenting placental abruption caused by blunt-force trauma.
Then she played the recording.
Derek’s face remained still until his own voice filled the virtual courtroom.
“Not until you sign.”
Lorraine’s voice followed.
“Sign it, and we’ll call an ambulance.”
Then the kick.
My scream.
And Lorraine’s command.
“Hit her again!”
Judge Price removed her glasses.
Voss immediately objected to authenticity, completeness, and chain of custody.
Naomi responded with the police evidence report, the officer’s body-camera footage, and the metadata showing the recording had been created continuously before police arrival.
The judge denied the custody petition.
She issued a temporary protective order covering both me and Grace.
She also referred Dr. Reeves’s affidavit to the medical board and the district attorney for possible perjury and professional misconduct.
Derek’s expression finally broke.
He leaned toward the camera.
“Rachel, tell them this is a misunderstanding.”
Judge Price’s voice sharpened.
“Mr. Collins, you will not address the petitioner.”
“I’m her husband.”
“You are the restrained party in a domestic violence case.”
Lorraine began crying.
“My granddaughter needs her family.”
Judge Price looked directly at her screen.
“Her mother is her family.”
The hearing ended.
I expected relief.
Instead, I felt exhausted.
They had nearly taken Grace from me using a sworn lie submitted while I lay unconscious after emergency surgery.
If I had not made the recording, they might have succeeded.
Naomi closed the tablet.
“Derek’s bail hearing is this afternoon.”
“Will he be released?”
“Voss will argue that he has no criminal record, strong community ties, and a business employing hundreds of people.”
“He almost killed us.”
“I know.”
The judge set Derek’s bond at seven hundred fifty thousand dollars and ordered him to surrender his passport, wear an ankle monitor, and stay away from the hospital.
The Collins family posted the bond before sunset.
Lorraine was released the following morning on a lower amount.
Both were forbidden to contact me.
Neither respected the meaning of the order.
Derek did not call directly.
Instead, flowers began arriving.
White roses.
The same flowers he had sent after the first time he shoved me into a wall.
Each card carried a different message.
You are destroying Grace’s future.
You know I didn’t mean it.
Tell the police you overreacted.
A family belongs together.
Naomi photographed every card before hospital security removed the arrangements.
Lorraine recruited other people.
Her church friends left voicemails saying forgiveness was a wife’s duty.
Derek’s business partner emailed me that hundreds of employees could lose their jobs if I continued making “reckless accusations.”
An anonymous account posted online that I had fabricated domestic violence to seize control of Collins Strategic Holdings.
The story spread faster than the truth.
My photograph appeared beside phrases like VINDICTIVE WIFE and CORPORATE COUP.
Derek released a statement through Voss.
He claimed he loved his daughter and looked forward to the day “all facts emerged.”
I did not respond publicly.
Instead, I worked with Naomi and Detective Ortiz.
The home recording was only one piece.
The smart-home system had cameras in the exterior hallways, garage, living room, and kitchen. Derek believed he had deleted the previous thirty days of footage.
He had forgotten that the security company retained encrypted backups whenever a system was accessed remotely.
Ortiz obtained a warrant.
The recovered footage showed Lorraine entering my bedroom when I was away, photographing legal documents, and opening drawers.
It showed Derek removing my laptop from my office.
It showed Celeste Ward arriving at the house six times during afternoons when Derek told me he was at work.
On one recording, Derek and Celeste stood in our kitchen ten days before the assault.
They were kissing.
I watched the footage once.
Then I asked Ortiz to continue.
Their affair hurt.
But the conversation after the kiss mattered more.
Celeste opened a folder.
“The transfer schedule is too aggressive,” she said. “Rachel will notice.”
“She already noticed,” Derek answered.
“Then slow down.”
“We don’t have time. The investors’ audit begins next month.”
“What about the policy?”
“Approved.”
“And after the baby?”
Derek poured himself a drink.
“My mother has a doctor ready to document postpartum instability.”
Celeste glanced toward the hallway.
“You said no one was getting hurt.”
“No one is getting hurt if Rachel cooperates.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
Derek stared directly toward the camera he believed was inactive.
“Then she’ll have a medical emergency.”
My stomach turned.
Naomi paused the video.
“That is attempted conspiracy territory.”
Ortiz nodded.
“We’re bringing in federal financial investigators. The transfers cross state lines.”
“Where is Celeste?” I asked.
“She hasn’t reported to work since Derek’s arrest. Her attorney says she is unavailable.”
Celeste appeared at the hospital that evening.
She wore blue scrubs, a surgical mask, and an employee badge belonging to a neonatal nurse named Rebecca Mills.
The real Rebecca Mills was home with influenza.
Celeste passed through the first security checkpoint by claiming she had forgotten her electronic access card.
At the second checkpoint, she told a new guard she was my sister.
She reached the NICU reception desk carrying an empty infant carrier.
Grace’s nurse recognized that something was wrong.
She had never seen Celeste before, and no transfer had been scheduled.
When the nurse asked for identification, Celeste panicked.
She shoved a clipboard from the counter and ran toward the restricted corridor.
Hospital security caught her twenty feet from Grace’s room.
I learned what happened when alarms sounded and two officers entered my room.
Naomi immediately moved between them and my bed.
“What happened?”
Officer Ortiz arrived moments later.
He held Celeste’s phone inside an evidence bag.
“She attempted to enter the NICU using a stolen badge.”
“Why?” I asked.
“She refuses to answer.”
“Was she trying to hurt Grace?”
“We don’t know.”
He pulled a chair closer.
“There are messages on her phone from a prepaid number. We believe it belongs to Lorraine.”
He read the first message.
Get the child before Rachel is discharged.
The second said:
Use the west exit. Cameras are being serviced.
The final message had been sent seventeen minutes before Celeste entered the hospital.
Bring her to the lake house. Derek will meet you there.
I gripped the blanket.
“Derek was supposed to take my daughter?”
Ortiz looked down at the phone.
“There’s another message from Celeste. It appears she became nervous.”
“What did she write?”
He hesitated.
Naomi’s voice was quiet.
“Read it.”
Ortiz did.
What about Rachel?
The response had come thirty seconds later.
The baby isn’t the only one he wants brought to the lake house.
When Grace’s nurse stepped into my room, her face was pale.
“There’s something else you should know,” she said.
“We checked the medication refrigerator after the incident.”
A vial assigned to Grace was missing.
May you like
And in Celeste’s abandoned carrier, security had found a syringe.
---
