Chapter 5 - The Hour He Made Them Wait
The hospital bed was too narrow to turn on my side. I lay on my back with the monitor belt tight around my belly and the heart tick up filling the quiet room, fast then slow then fast again. A nurse had taped my admission bracelet crooked. My uniform was gone, bagged somewhere. I wore a thin gown that kept slipping off my shoulder, and my hair was still damp with sweat from the tile floor.
My phone buzzed on the tray table. Unknown, but I knew.
I answered before the second ring. "Julian?"
Static, then his breathing. Behind him I could hear music, low and muffled, and people talking too loud the way guests do when they know something went wrong. "Elena. It's me. I'm in the suite with Vanessa," he said. His voice sounded different than it had on the tile. Flatter.
I pressed the phone hard to my ear. The monitor ticked on.
"Are you—" he started, then stopped. "Tell me again. What happened here?"
My chest tightened. I stared at the ceiling tile with its little water stain shaped like Texas. "I already told you," I whispered. "On the floor. I told you."
"I need to hear it straight," he said. "Please."
I swallowed. My hand went automatically to my belly. "I was wiping the bottom step. She came down fast. She—" My throat closed. "She shoved my shoulder. I fell back. That's all I remember until you were there."
There was a pause. Then Vanessa's voice, sharp and close, like she'd grabbed the phone. "Oh, that's perfect. That's exactly what she'd say."
I froze. I could picture that private dressing suite off the ballroom, the mirrors and the garment bags I'd steamed that morning, her veil hanging over the chair.
"Vanessa, stop," Julian said, away from the mouthpiece but I still heard him.
"No, let her hear me," Vanessa said. "She was careless on those stairs. The mop was still out. Everyone saw the bucket. She slipped, Julian. Now she's after money because she knows today we can't fight back."
"That's not true," I said, too quick, my voice cracking. The monitor jumped and the nurse by the door looked up at me.
Vanessa laughed once, short. "You clean houses. You know what this wedding cost. A fall on our day? Convenient."
I gripped the bed rail. My knuckles went white. "My baby isn't moving like before," I said. "Why would I make that up?"
"Ask her how many weeks she is. Ask her if she was even supposed to be lifting that bucket," Vanessa snapped. "She wants a payout."
Julian cut in. "Enough." His breath came back on the line. "Elena, hold on. Marcus is here."
Another voice came on, lower, calmer. The best man. I'd seen him that morning in the hallway, fixing Julian's cufflinks. "Elena? It's Marcus. Listen, are you stable?"
"I—I think so. They're watching the heartbeat," I said.
"Good. Good," he said. "Look, Julian asked me to check. There is a hallway camera. Right above the staircase landing, pointed down at the front tiles. It covers where you fell."
My eyes burned. I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding.
"But the security office is locked," Marcus went on. "Old Mr. Perry's got the only key and he's at the church lot with the shuttle until four. We can't just break the door down with two hundred guests upstairs."
I heard Julian swear under his breath. Chairs scraped. That muffled ballroom music swelled, then faded as a door closed.
"So we wait?" Vanessa said in the background. "We have a string quartet stalling and my mother crying in the ballroom, Julian. We go out there now and we get married. The ambulance is gone. This is over."
"It's not over," Julian said. He was quiet for a second. I heard his shoes on what sounded like tile. "We're delaying one hour."
"What?" Vanessa's voice spiked. "You can't be serious."
"One hour," he repeated. "They're monitoring her. I'm calling the hospital back in twenty minutes. I'm not standing up there saying vows while I don't know if—" He stopped.
"While you don't know what? If she lost it? That's not our problem," Vanessa hissed. "You delay this wedding and everyone will know why. You'll humiliate me."
I closed my eyes. The monitor ticked. Tick. Tick. Tick.
May you like
"Elena?" Julian said softly, back to me. "Don't talk to anyone else yet. Don't sign anything. I'm going to check on you. I promise."
The line went dead before I could answer. I sat there with the phone hot against my cheek, listening to the empty air and the baby's thin heartbeat, and down the hall somewhere a cart rattled and a woman laughed like it was any ordinary day.
