But Erica was used to getting away with everything. She bypassed Michael with a twisted, manic smirk on her face, raised her foot, and violently kicked me directly in my pregnant stomach. She actually laughed, a high-pitched, chilling sound, shouting that she “just wanted to hear the sound it made!”
The force of the blow knocked the wind out of me, and I collapsed onto the hardwood floor, clutching my abdomen as a wave of agonizing, searing pain ripped through my body. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t speak.

Instead of rushing to my aid, my father stood up, crossing his arms. He looked down at me with total disgust. “Stand up right now, Sarah—or I’ll let her do it again. Stop faking it for attention. You always have to make everything about you.” My mother just nodded in agreement, murmuring about how I was trying to ruin a nice family Sunday.
Michael snapped. He leveled a look at my family that I had never seen before—a look of pure, unadulterated fury. While pressing a jacket against me to stop the sudden, terrifying flow of blood, he dialed 911. He didn’t just ask for an ambulance; he demanded the police.

Because we lived less than two minutes from a major hospital and a precinct, the response was terrifyingly fast. The front door was shoved open, and a wave of paramedics and an emergency on-call doctor rushed into the room, followed closely by two police officers. The chaotic chatter in the room died instantly. My parents finally realized this wasn’t a game when the paramedics dropped to their knees around my shaking body.

The doctor pulled out a portable Doppler, applying the gel to my stomach. The silence in that room was suffocating. No one breathed. For a solid two minutes, the only sound was the static of the machine. Then, the doctor looked up, his face completely drained of color. He looked directly at Michael and said one quiet sentence that shattered my entire world into a million pieces: “The baby isn’t moving anymore.

There’s no heartbeat.”
A guttural, animalistic sob tore from my throat before I blacked out from the sheer physical and emotional agony.