Erik

Loud screams echo through the corridor outside the delivery room. The pain in Maddi's body is almost unbearable, but the screams that tear her own heart apart are not only coming from the physical - they are the echo of everything she has lost, of the loneliness she carries within her. The room is filled with hustle and bustle, with rude commanding words pelting down like a hailstorm. She has no right to speak. She is no longer part of it.
“NO! You are not allowed to take him away!” she screams, her voice an angry, desperate cry that seems to go unheard. The doctors try to hold her down while the tiny, thin newborn is torn away from her, hurriedly and without mercy. The umbilical cord is cut with haste, a sickening sound that burns into her ear. She sees the tiny body of her son - too small, too fragile, as he leaves the room with a doctor.
“Calm the fuck down! Your son needs to be examined! There have been complications!” the doctor yells at her, but to Maddi it is like a distant echo reverberating in the walls of the room. “Someone give her a sedative!”

Maddi doesn't really hear the words, only feels the terrible pressure in her chest. Everything is blurred, the world around her seems to fade away.
The air becomes thin.
The room turns gray, and then it gets darker and darker.

...

The silence is suddenly a vacuum that threatens to suffocate her. She opens her eyes - and for a moment she doesn't know where she is.

Is this all just a nightmare?
Is Charles still alive?
What about my son?

She blinks, trying to organize her thoughts. She looks around. Her hands feel heavy and uncontrolled, but when she turns her gaze to a small bed, a strange, cold panic spreads through her.

Is he all right?

Hesitantly, she sits up. The pain from the birth has settled in her body, her limbs are like lead. She rubs her face while trying to wipe away the tears that are burning her cheeks.
He is there. Her son. She sees him, but she can't believe it.
Gently she leans towards him, pulls the little bed a centimeter towards her, she has to make sure that he is really there, that he really is her son. But when she looks over the edge of the crib, she is flooded with a wave of horror.
It's not what she expected.
It is not what she had imagined in her wildest fears.
She sees the small body, so fragile and vulnerable, and then she sees what she hadn't wanted to see: the cleft in his jaw - a horrible, gaping wound that destroys the delicate features of his face.
She jerks back as if an invisible blow has struck her. Her heart beats wildly in her chest. The disgust that overcomes her is unbearable. She no longer really sees him, but only what is missing, what is so terribly wrong.
Her eyes are searching for something - for a way to suppress the image that has burned itself into her head, but she cannot.

There is no escape from this sight.