Lily's Last Breath, A Marriage's End

“The phone was slick with sweat as I screamed my address to the 911 operator, my three-year-old daughter, Lily, gasping for air on the living room carpet, her face a terrifying shade of blue. "She has a heart condition," I choked out. "She needs an ambulance. Now." From the bedroom, I heard my wife, Sarah, on the phone, her voice a low, intimate murmur, oblivious to Lily' s agony. She was talking to another man, David, expressing concern for his sick son, Leo. Rage scorching my veins, I confronted her. "Lily can' t breathe! Get off the damn phone!" She flinched, looking at me with annoyance. "I' m talking to David. His son is sick. It' s important." "Our daughter is dying!" I yelled, but she just rolled her eyes dismissively. "You' re overreacting, Ethan. She probably just has a cold. You always panic." My world fractured. When the ambulance finally arrived, it was too late. Dr. Evans, his eyes weary, delivered the crushing news: "We lost her." Lily was gone. Hours later, I called Sarah, trembling, trying to tell her. "Lily... she' s gone." But her words sliced me like knives. "What are you talking about? Gone where? I' m at the hospital with David; Leo' s getting his kidney transplant tomorrow." Disbelief, then a chilling horror, washed over me as she dismissed Lily' s death as another one of my "dramas," hanging up to celebrate Leo' s transplant. When her parents, John and Mary, arrived, they scrolled through Sarah' s social media: a smiling photo of her and David, celebrating Leo' s perfect match-posted after I called her. "A perfect match, right now?" John' s voice was low, dangerous. A horrible suspicion began to dawn: was this more than just indifference? Could it be something far more sinister?”