Chapter 10: The Room Goes Quiet
The nurse asked me not to move while she tightened the band around my stomach. Its pressure made the cramp feel sharper, as if my body had turned every sensation toward the light.
“Tell me when the pain starts,” she said.
“It hasn’t stopped.”
She glanced at the monitor, then at my face. Her calm stayed in place, but her hand moved faster as she called for the doctor.
Megan held on to me. I could feel her pulse beating against my fingers, quick and uneven.
“Look at me,” she said. “Not the screen. Me.”
I tried. Her face swam at the edges, then settled. Behind her, Officer Ruiz stepped back from the bed to give the nurse room. The hospital smelled like disinfectant and warm plastic, and the monitor filled the silence with beeps that no longer sounded reassuring.
The doctor arrived with another nurse. She checked the screen, asked me questions, and pressed gently against my belly. When the next contraction came, I shut my eyes and breathed out through clenched teeth.
“We’re seeing the contractions return,” she said when it passed. “And because of the concern about the placenta, we need to watch the baby more closely.”
“Is the heartbeat okay?”
“It’s there, and we’re monitoring it continuously. But I don’t want to promise you we can simply wait this out.”
The word wait landed with a weight I couldn’t push away. I looked at the band around my stomach, at the small numbers trembling across the screen. The baby had been steady before. I held on to that fact without asking it to guarantee anything.
The doctor explained that if the pattern continued or changed, they might need to deliver sooner than expected. She said they were preparing for that possibility now, while there was still time to make decisions carefully.
“Can you stop the contractions?” I asked.
“We’re treating what we can and watching closely. The safest next step depends on what your body and the baby do.”
No one said the baby would be fine. No one said the baby wouldn’t.
The room seemed to shrink around the bed. Then a man’s voice rose somewhere beyond the open door, followed by my father’s, low and furious. I turned toward the sound.
“Dad?”
Megan looked toward the hall. Ruiz moved to the doorway, but she didn’t leave.
“He’s outside,” Megan said. “Eric came here.”
My father appeared a moment later, shoulders rigid, his face flushed. He looked at the monitor, then at me, and whatever he’d been about to say vanished.
“Don’t fight him,” I said.
“Claire—”
“Please. Don’t make me listen to you fighting him while they’re trying to help the baby.”
His jaw worked. For a second, he looked ready to argue that he had every reason to be angry. Then he came to the bedside and laid his palm on the rail instead of reaching for me.
“I’m right here,” he said.
“I know. Just don’t let him pull you into this.”
My father lowered his eyes. The anger was still there, but he let it stay his instead of handing it to me.
“All right,” he said. “I won’t.”
The doctor asked if I needed a moment before she continued. I nodded, and she waited while I took a careful breath. My body was still clenched around the pain, but I tried to listen to the next instructions without leaping ahead to every terrible possibility.
Ruiz approached Megan.
“You said you were ready to tell me what happened with those pages,” she said. “We can do that here, or I can speak with you outside.”
Megan’s fingers tightened around mine.
“Here,” she said. “I don’t want to leave her.”
Ruiz glanced at the nurse, who gave a small nod. She pulled a chair closer, and Megan sat without letting go of my hand.
“I initialed where he told me to,” Megan said. Her voice shook once, then steadied. “He said Claire had already approved the papers. I didn’t see her sign. I should have asked her. I didn’t.”
Ruiz wrote down her words.
“Did you understand what the pages were for?”
“No. He called them routine household forms. I believed him.”
Megan looked at me, shame burning across her face.
“I want it written down that I did it,” she said. “I’m not going to pretend I didn’t.”
Ruiz kept her voice even. “I’m recording exactly what you remember. If there’s something you aren’t sure of, say you aren’t sure. Don’t fill in gaps.”
“I understand.”
The sentence was plain, but I felt something shift between us. Megan wasn’t asking me to erase what she’d done. She was letting the truth stand where both of us could see it.
I wanted to tell her that it was enough, that I forgave her, that she could stop looking as though she were waiting for me to turn away. The words came close. I let them pass. This wasn’t the moment to make a promise just because fear had made everything feel urgent.
“Thank you for telling her,” I said.
Megan nodded, eyes wet. She didn’t ask what the words meant for us.
My father glanced toward the hallway. “He’s still out there.”
“Let him be out there,” I said.
A nurse adjusted the monitor and asked me to tell her when the next tightening began. My attention moved to my own breath, to the warm hand holding mine, to the doctor watching the screen. I didn’t have to settle the house, the money, my father’s anger, or Megan’s guilt in the same minute. I only had to be here.
Megan’s phone buzzed on the chair beside Ruiz. The screen lit with Eric’s name.
She flinched.
“You don’t have to read it,” I said.
“I need to know what he’s doing.”
Ruiz didn’t reach for the phone. “You can decide whether to open it. If you do, keep the message as it is.”
Megan picked it up. Her face tightened as she read, then she turned the screen toward me.
The message was short.
The sale is going through. If Claire can’t make decisions, I’ll make sure everyone knows it.
My mouth went dry. The words seemed to tilt the room: the monitor, the doctor, my father at the rail. Eric had found a way to turn my body’s emergency into an argument about my mind.
“He can’t do that,” Megan whispered.
I stared at the screen until the letters blurred.
“Don’t answer him,” Ruiz said. “I’ll note what you received.”
Megan handed her the phone, then reclaimed my hand. This time, she didn’t apologize or ask me what to do. She simply stayed.
The next contraction began low and climbed. I told the nurse. She watched the monitor, and the doctor stepped closer, her attention fixed on the pattern.
When it eased, I was left trembling beneath the blanket. My father stood quiet at the rail. Ruiz had finished writing. Megan’s thumb moved over my knuckles, slow and steady, while the room filled with the sounds of people preparing for a possibility none of us could control.
May you like
The doctor came to my bedside.
“We’re ready to move you if we need to,” she said. Her expression was serious, but her voice remained gentle. “Claire, given what we’re seeing, I don’t think we can safely wait much longer.”
