Chapter 11: The Call from the Porch
The doctor’s words had barely settled before the room began moving around me.
A nurse checked the monitor. Another rolled a cart closer to the bed. The doctor spoke in a low voice to someone near the door, and I caught only pieces: timing, heartbeat, ready. My own body seemed to belong to the machine now, measured by the green line that rose and dipped beside me.
Megan held my hand. Her palm was damp against mine.
“Is the baby in trouble?” I asked.
“The baby’s heartbeat is strong,” the doctor said, coming back to my side. “But we need to act before waiting becomes riskier than delivering. We’ll explain each step as we go.”
I nodded, though the words had left a ringing emptiness in my head. Strong heartbeat. Need to act. The hospital bracelet pressed against my wrist when I gripped Megan’s fingers.
A phone rang in the hallway.
The nurse who had been adjusting my monitor glanced toward the sound. A moment later, she returned with a handset.
“It’s your father,” she said. “He asked if you could speak.”
My stomach tightened, though not from a contraction. “Is he all right?”
“He said he wanted you to hear it from him.”
The nurse placed the phone near my ear. I heard wind and a hollow thump, as if someone had shut a car door.
“Dad?”
“I’m here,” he said. His voice was controlled, but the strain beneath it made my fingers curl into the blanket. “Eric came back.”
The room sharpened around me: the monitor’s steady pulse, the wheels of the cart, Megan’s hand tightening over mine.
“Where are you?”
“On the porch. He brought someone with him. They’re both demanding I let them in.”
“Dad, don’t go near them.”
“I’m not opening the door.”
“I mean don’t get between them and the door. Don’t try to stop him yourself.”
A pause. I could hear him breathe.
“I can take care of myself, Claire.”
“You don’t have to prove that to me.” My voice came out thin, then strengthened. “Please. I need you safe.”
The monitor clicked, measuring my pulse as if it could tell how close I was to losing control. The doctor watched the screen without looking away from me for long.
Dad lowered his voice. “He says he has a right to be there.”
“Then let Officer Ruiz deal with that. Give her the documents. Don’t hand anything to Eric.”
“I still have them.”
“Call Ruiz. Tell her exactly what’s happening and where the papers are.”
“I can do that.”
“Promise me you won’t confront him.”
Another pause. This one lasted long enough to fill the space between us.
“Claire—”
“Dad.”
“I’ll stay inside,” he said at last. “I won’t open the door.”
It wasn’t the promise I wanted, but it was the one he gave. I pressed my eyes shut, trying to hold on to his voice instead of imagining Eric on the porch, trying to make a demand sound like a right.
“Call Ruiz now,” I said. “Please.”
“I will.”
The connection crackled. Behind him, a man spoke too faintly for me to make out. Dad’s breathing changed.
“Dad?”
“I’m still here.” His voice was closer to the phone now. “They’re saying—”
The nurse lifted the handset away as the doctor stepped beside her.
“We need to move,” the doctor said. “Claire, we’re taking you to the delivery room now.”
“I have to stay on the phone.”
“Your father knows what you asked him to do,” Megan said. She leaned close enough that I could see the shine of tears in her eyes. “I’ll make sure Ruiz gets the message.”
I looked at her. There were so many things between us: the pages she had initialed, the years she had believed Eric when he said I’d already agreed, the message he’d sent to frighten her into silence. Now her hand was holding mine without asking me to make any of it disappear.
The nurse brought the phone back to my ear.
“Dad, I have to go.”
“Go,” he said. I heard him draw a breath. “I love you.”
“I love you, too. Stay inside.”
“I will.”
The call ended before I could ask whether the other man was still there. The blank tone buzzed against my ear for a second, and then the nurse took the handset away.
I wanted to call back. I wanted to know whether Dad had moved, whether Eric had touched the door, whether the documents were still safe. I wanted to be on the porch and nowhere near the delivery room.
Instead, a contraction gathered deep in my abdomen and climbed until I could no longer make room in my mind for anything else. My body folded around the pain. Megan braced my shoulder while the nurse told me to breathe slowly.
When it eased, the doctor was waiting with a question.
“Are you ready to go?”
No, I thought. I wasn’t ready for the house, or Eric, or the possibility that my father might be standing alone between them and the papers. I wasn’t ready to have a baby while the rest of my life waited on the other side of a hospital wall.
But the nurse had already unlocked the bed’s wheels, and the monitor’s quickened rhythm kept counting.
“I’m ready,” I said.
Megan walked beside me as they rolled the bed into the corridor. Her thumb moved once across my knuckles, then stopped, leaving the choice of whether to reach back to me.
I reached.
She took my hand again.
The ceiling lights slid overhead, one after another. I kept trying to listen for the phone, for Dad’s voice, for any sign that the call had not ended in the middle of something terrible. All I heard was the soft rush of wheels and the monitor keeping time beside me.
At the delivery-room entrance, a nurse asked Megan to wait.
My fingers tightened around hers.
“I’m here,” she said. She didn’t promise anything beyond that.
May you like
I let go.
The doors swung closed before I could learn what happened at the house.
