“Okay. We’re going to get you evaluated.”
“I can’t,” I whispered. “My husband—”
“Your husband can wait,” she said firmly. “Your baby can’t.”
Those words were the first clean thing anyone said to me that day.
Within fifteen minutes, I was in a labor assessment room with monitors strapped around my belly and a nurse asking me questions I answered in fragments. Yes, first baby. Yes, thirty-three weeks. No, no bleeding. Yes, severe stress. Yes, contractions. No, my husband was not available.
They gave me fluids, checked my blood pressure, watched the monitor. My son’s heartbeat was fast but steady, a rushing little gallop that made tears slip silently into my hairline. I kept thinking of Jack sitting beside Lauren, holding the wrong hand while the real emergency unfolded down the hall.
At 4:17 p.m., my phone buzzed.
Jack.
I watched the screen until it stopped.
Then it buzzed again.
Where are you?
Then:
Emily answer me.
Then:
Lauren was having a scare. I need you to be reasonable.
Reasonable.
That word has always been dangerous in the mouths of selfish men. It means accept what would shame them if exposed. It means shrink your pain until it fits inside their convenience.
I did not answer.
Instead, I called Mike.
His name had sat in my contacts for almost a year without use. Mike Reynolds and I had worked together at a design consulting firm before I left to freelance from home during pregnancy. He was not dramatic. Not charming in the way Jack was. Mike was the kind of person who noticed when a conference room was too cold and quietly adjusted the thermostat before anyone asked. He had once stayed three hours late to help me fix a client presentation after Jack forgot to pick me up from the office. He had never made a pass at me. Never crossed a line. That was why I trusted him.
He answered on the second ring.
“Emily?”
“I’m at Seattle Grace,” I said, and my voice cracked for the first time. “I think I’m going into labor.”
