Chapter 13 - THE CALL I MADE
“Dad!”
He was in the doorway before I finished saying it.
I had never heard my own voice sound like that.
He called for help while I spoke to the hospital. Tessa met us there, still wearing slippers.
The room filled quickly.
Monitors. Questions. Dr. Patel’s hand on my shoulder.
They were concerned about bleeding and the baby’s heart rate.
I asked whether it was because of the fall.
“We can’t determine that right now,” she said. “Our job is to take care of both of you.”
There was no time for the answer I wanted.
Only the next instruction.
Dad stood beside the bed while they prepared to move me.
“I’m scared.”
“I know.”
“What if—”
“Look at me.”
I did.
“I’m here.”
He had said the same thing on the stairs.
This time, I held on to it.
They delivered my daughter by emergency C-section.
I remember pressure.
A blue curtain.
Someone telling me to keep breathing.
Then a cry.
Thin, furious, alive.
“Is that her?”
“That’s her.”
They let me see her before taking her to the neonatal team.
Her face was red. Her eyes were squeezed shut. One hand had worked itself free of the blanket.
I loved her so hard it frightened me.
“Emma,” I said.
My mother’s name.
Later, in recovery, Dad showed me a photograph he’d been allowed to take.
She looked impossibly small among the equipment.
“She’s getting help with her breathing,” he said. “The doctor will come explain everything.”
“Did you touch her?”
“They let me put one finger in her hand.”
He swallowed.
“She’s got a grip.”
My phone was with Tessa.
When she returned, she looked at Mara before she looked at me.
“What?”
Mara pulled up a chair.
“Ryan knows you delivered.”
“How?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“He can’t come here.”
“Hospital security has been notified. Your privacy instructions are in place.”
Tessa laid the phone on the table.
May you like
There was a voicemail from Ryan’s mother.
Claire, stop punishing him. He has a right to see his child. Ryan is already on his way.
