Chapter 2
At the hospital, a nurse asked me what had happened before anyone asked what Lucas had said.
I clung to that small mercy. The questions came while someone checked my blood pressure and another person pressed a cool monitor against my abdomen. I kept my eyes on the nurse’s face, afraid that if I looked away, I’d lose the thread of my own story.
“My husband hit me,” I said. “His mother grabbed me. I fell against the counter. Then I started bleeding.”
“Did either of them hit your abdomen?”
“I don’t know. I hit the counter hard.”
The nurse nodded, steady and unhurried even as the room filled around us. “You’re doing the right thing telling us.”
My stomach tightened again. I caught the edge of the bed and sucked in a breath through my teeth.
A doctor leaned over the monitor. The quick, uneven thudding that filled the room was my daughter’s heartbeat—or what I prayed was her heartbeat. Nobody met my eyes for a moment. Then the doctor looked at me.
“We’re concerned about a placental abruption,” she said. “The placenta may be separating from the wall of your uterus. We need to move quickly.”
The words made the room tilt. I thought of the blood on the kitchen floor, Lucas’s face as he blocked the door, and how long it had taken for anyone to get me here.
“Is she alive?”
“We’re monitoring her heart rate right now.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
The doctor’s expression softened, but she didn’t offer a promise she couldn’t keep.
“We can hear her heartbeat. We’re going to do everything we can.”
A nurse started an IV. Someone asked about allergies, medications, my last meal. I answered as best I could, each word squeezed out between the pains. A social worker appeared at the edge of the room and said police were available if I wanted to speak with them later.
“Not now,” I managed. “I need to know about my baby.”
When the doctor returned, her voice was gentler but no less urgent.
“Her heart rate is becoming concerning. We recommend an emergency cesarean. She’s thirty-one weeks, so she’ll need the NICU team ready. Do you understand?”
I nodded. The signature on the consent form wavered beneath my hand.
“Save her,” I whispered.
“We’re going to try.”
They wheeled me toward the operating room. The ceiling lights passed overhead one after another, too white, too bright. I tried to hold on to my daughter’s heartbeat in my mind, though the monitor was gone and all I could hear was the rolling bed and people calling out instructions.
At the operating-room doors, a nurse leaned close.
“Do you want us to contact your father?”
“He knows,” I said. “But I want you to explain everything to me. Don’t let anyone answer for me.”
“You got it.”
I wasn’t sure I believed her. But I held on to the sentence anyway.
The room smelled sharp and cold. A curtain rose between my face and my body. My hands trembled beneath a warm blanket while the anesthesiologist talked me through what she was doing. I kept asking whether they could hear the baby.
Then, at last, a thin cry cut through the room.
It was so small I wondered if I had imagined it.
“That’s her,” someone said. “She’s here.”
I tried to lift my head. The curtain blocked everything.
“Can I see her?”
The nurse brought a bundle close for only a moment. I saw a red, scrunched face, a cap of dark hair, and one tiny hand opening and closing as if she were trying to catch the air. Then the NICU team took her away.
My body felt suddenly hollow. I had spent months feeling her shift inside me; now there was only pain, pressure, and the terrible quiet where she had been.
“Is she breathing?”
“She’s breathing with help,” the nurse said. “The NICU team is taking care of her.”
I tried to memorize what I’d seen. Red face. Dark hair. One hand reaching. The details seemed too fragile to trust.
By the time Thomas arrived from Roanoke, I was in recovery, shivering beneath warmed blankets. He came in wearing his farm coat, his gray hair mussed, his eyes fixed on my face. For a second, neither of us spoke.
Then he stopped beside the bed.
“Can I hold your hand?”
I nodded.
His fingers closed around mine carefully, as though I might break.
“Your daughter is in the NICU,” I told him. “They’re helping her breathe.”
“I’m here,” he said.
The words weren’t a promise that everything would be fine. They didn’t ask me to be brave or tell me not to worry. He simply stayed beside me while I shook.
A nurse came in with a tablet. Lucas had called, she said, asking for an update. I watched her wait for my answer.
“Don’t give him information about me or the baby.”
“All right,” she said. “I’ll note that.”
Thomas’s grip tightened, then eased. He didn’t speak for me. He didn’t tell the nurse what to do. He let me make the choice and stayed close enough that I could feel him there.
For a little while, there was nothing to do but wait.
I asked to see my daughter as soon as I was able. The nurse said she’d try to arrange it. I counted the minutes by the ache in my abdomen and the changing numbers on the wall clock. Every time footsteps passed my door, I thought they might be coming to tell me something.
When a nurse finally entered, she carried a tiny knitted cap in both hands.
May you like
It was pale yellow, no bigger than my palm.
“Your daughter has taken a frightening turn,” she said. “We need you to come to the NICU now.”
