“She’s fine, she’s fine,” Nate stammered, his face pale. “She just had a little panic attack, she gave herself her medicine…” “She’s pregnant and cyanotic, you idiot!” the manager screamed back, turning me onto my side.
The next few hours were a blur of ambulance sirens, flashing red lights, and the sterile smell of the emergency room.
They pumped me full of steroids and antihistamines, attaching fetal monitors to my stomach to check on the baby. By some absolute miracle, the baby’s heart rate was strong. We had both survived. Nate tried to come into my hospital room two hours later, his eyes red from crying, playing the part of the traumatized, caring husband.
He reached for my hand. “Clara, baby, I was so scared…” I hit the nurse call button and calmly asked security to remove him from the premises. The truth came out later that night when the police went to the venue to investigate the incident as a potential poisoning.
Brenda broke down and confessed to the officers. She admitted she had intentionally requested the bakery use soy flour and soy lecithin in my “special” cake. She told them she thought I was faking the allergy for attention, trying to steal Nate’s focus away from her milestone birthday.
She wanted to “expose” me as a liar in front of the whole family. She just hadn’t expected me to actually go into anaphylactic shock. And Nate? Nate confessed that his mother had warned him she was going to “test” me. He knew the cake was contaminated.
When my throat closed, he panicked because he realized she had been wrong, but he was too terrified of his mother’s wrath to intervene and ruin her party by causing a medical scene.
He thought if he just let me get “a little sick” and took me outside, he could save face for everyone.
I filed for divorce the next morning from my hospital bed. The police arrested Brenda for reckless endangerment and aggravated assault. I was granted an emergency restraining order against Nate, who will never get the chance to meet the child he almost allowed to suffocate on a barn floor.
People ask me how I’m doing now, months later. I’m safe, my baby is healthy, and I’m surrounded by people who actually love me. But sometimes, when I walk past a bakery, the smell of vanilla buttercream still makes my throat tighten with absolute terror.
