Part 3
The ambulance turned hard enough to shift Leah against the straps.
Keisha apologized from the bench beside her, though neither of them had any control over traffic. She had placed a second blanket over Leah and taped the IV tubing along her forearm. Every few minutes she repeated the same questions in a different order: where the pain was, whether it changed, whether the baby had moved.
The answer to the last question remained no. Leah held Ben’s crooked green cap against her sternum. She had made fun of its long pointed crown when he finished it, telling him their child would look like a garden gnome. Ben had refused to unravel it. After the miscarriage, they had packed away anything made for the first baby, but this time he had begun again with yarn because it could be pulled apart if hope became dangerous.
“Your husband still coming?” Keisha asked.
“A coworker is driving him. If he drove himself, he’d try to get here in half the time.”
“Good coworker.”
“She took his keys.”
Keisha almost smiled. “Excellent coworker.”
The humor lasted only until another wave of pain tightened Leah’s abdomen. Keisha watched the monitor, then leaned forward to assess her again. There was more blood now, still not much, but enough that the paramedic’s movements became even quieter.
“Am I in labor?” Leah asked.
“I don’t know. There are several things the obstetric team will consider.”
“You have an idea.”
“I have reasons to get you there quickly.” Keisha met her eyes. “That’s the honest answer.”
At Carolina Memorial, a team was waiting behind the ambulance doors. Leah was taken past registration and into obstetric triage, where a nurse cut away the conference badge still hanging under her scarf. The ordinary destruction of it—the plastic ribbon snipped as if the last two days of her life no longer mattered—frightened her more than the rushing stretcher had.
Adhesive monitors were placed across her abdomen. A fast electronic rhythm filled the room, stumbled, and slowed.
The nurse adjusted one sensor. “Is that him?” Leah asked.
“That’s your baby.”
“It sounds wrong.”
The nurse did not offer the easy reassurance Leah wanted. She pressed a call button and said, “The doctor is coming now.”
Dr. Priya Shah entered with her dark hair tucked beneath a surgical cap, although no one had yet said surgery. She asked Leah to describe the pain while her hands moved over the firm curve of Leah’s abdomen. An ultrasound machine was brought in. The grainy image turned on the screen, familiar enough to be beloved and strange enough to mean nothing.
“There is a heartbeat,” Dr. Shah said. “But the pattern is telling us the baby may not be getting what he needs consistently.”
“Why?”
“Your symptoms make me concerned that part of the placenta has separated from the wall of the uterus. That can cause bleeding we don’t see on the outside. An ultrasound doesn’t always show us the separation clearly.”
Leah tried to fit the explanation around the fact that she had walked through two airports believing the ache came from a molded plastic seat. “Can you stop it?”
“We can support you, monitor both of you, and decide how quickly the baby needs to be delivered. Right now his heart rate keeps dropping and taking too long to recover.”
As if summoned by the words, the electronic rhythm slowed again. The nurse turned Leah onto her side. Another nurse opened the IV wider and placed an oxygen mask near her face. Dr. Shah watched the screen for several seconds.
When she looked back at Leah, her voice had changed.
“We need to deliver by emergency cesarean. Waiting is becoming more dangerous for both of you.”
The consent form appeared on a clipboard. Leah’s name had already been printed at the top, as though someone else had entered a future she had not agreed to yet.
“He’s only thirty-one weeks.”
“A neonatal team is ready. He will need help, and I can’t promise what kind or for how long. But keeping him inside is no longer the safer choice.”
Leah’s hand shook so badly the first version of her signature was only an L followed by a line. The nurse steadied the bottom of the clipboard, not Leah’s hand, and waited while she tried again.
“Call my husband.”
Ben answered before the first ring ended. Road noise filled the line, then diminished as someone turned down the car’s ventilation.
“We’re a little over three hours out,” he said. “Carmen’s driving. Tell me what they said.”
“They’re taking the baby now.”
Silence came from the other end, followed by one rough breath. “Okay,” Ben said. “Okay. That’s what they need to do.”
“Don’t say it like you know.”
“I’m trying not to fall apart in Carmen’s car.”
The honesty silenced her. Around the bed, people prepared to move. A nurse placed the green cap in a clear belongings bag and tucked it beneath the blanket near Leah’s hip.
“I should’ve made you call the doctor this morning,” Ben said.
“You can’t make me call anyone.”
“That’s not what I—Leah, you said the pain stopped.”
“Because when I tell you I have a headache, you start searching for an emergency room. Since we lost—” Her voice caught. She had spent two years finding ways not to say the baby, as if language had been part of what failed them. “You look at me like my body is a door somebody forgot to lock.”
“And you protect me by telling me less.”
“I was trying to get home.”
“I know.” Ben’s voice broke on the last word. “We can fight about how scared we are when you’re out of surgery.”
The bed began moving. “Don’t promise me everything will be fine,” Leah said.
“I won’t.”
“Just stay on the phone.”
He stayed while ceiling lights passed above her and the elevator carried her to the operating floor. He stayed as an anesthesiologist explained what would happen and asked questions Leah could barely process. He stayed until a nurse told her the phone could go no farther and placed it with the green cap.
“I’m still here,” Ben said.
Then the line ended.
The operating room was brighter than the airport and colder than the ambulance. Leah remembered hands, names, a mask, and Dr. Shah leaning close enough that Leah could see the faint indentation where her own mask had pressed against her cheek.
“We’re going to take care of both of you,” the doctor said.
It was not a promise of outcome. Leah understood the difference now.
When she opened her eyes again, her throat hurt and the room was dim. Ben sat beside the bed in the wrinkled blue shirt he had worn to work. He was bent forward with his elbows on his knees, staring at a photograph on his phone.
Leah tried to say his name. Only air came out.
He looked up so quickly that the chair rolled backward. “He’s alive,” Ben said.
She closed her eyes. The relief was too large to pass through her all at once.
“Where?”
“NICU. He came out at three pounds, eleven ounces. He’s breathing with help, but the doctor said he responded well when they—” Ben stopped, aware that he was pouring information into a body still waking from anesthesia. He reached for her hand, then waited until she turned her palm upward. “You lost a lot of blood. They gave you a transfusion. Dr. Shah said part of the placenta had pulled away.”
“Did you see him?”
“For a minute. They’re getting him settled now.”
He held out the phone. In the photograph, their son lay beneath transparent tubing and wires, a knit hospital cap covering most of his head. Ben had placed one finger beside the baby’s hand for scale. The tiny fingers had closed around the tip.
Leah touched the screen. “He doesn’t have a name.”
“He can wait until you meet him.”
For once, Ben did not suggest a list or ask her to decide. He sat with his hand open beside hers while machines marked the time her body needed.
Leah looked again at the photograph. Their son’s chest was hidden by leads and blankets, but one small foot pressed against the edge of the nest around him, resisting the space he had been given.
“Take me to him,” she whispered…
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