Chapter 6 - The Ambulance Ride
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“Can I touch you, Em?” he asked, his voice cracking slightly with emotion.
I managed a weak nod.
He knelt down beside me, moving with incredible care. Very gently, he slid his large, calloused hand beneath mine, resting it lightly on the cold tile. He wasn't trying to pull me up or move me; he was just giving me something solid and safe to hold onto.
“The baby?” he whispered, his eyes filled with a terrifying vulnerability.
I looked down toward my swollen stomach, the fear twisting like a knife in my gut.
“I don’t know yet,” I admitted, the tears finally spilling over my eyelashes.
That honesty mattered. There were no false promises. He didn't say, “Everything will be perfectly fine,” because neither of us knew if it would be.
He looked up toward the hallway as the paramedics finally came rushing through the doorway, carrying heavy bags and a portable stretcher.
“They’re going to help both of you,” my father promised softly, squeezing my hand tightly before stepping back to give the medical team room to work.
The ensuing ambulance ride was incredibly loud and chaotic, far louder than I had ever expected. The wailing sirens pierced the early morning quiet, the medical equipment rattled against the metal walls, and the paramedics fired a barrage of rapid, necessary questions.
My blood pressure was dangerously low. My heart rate was far too high.
The lead paramedic, a woman with kind but serious eyes, leaned over me.
“How far along are you, Emily?” she asked, quickly attaching electrodes to my chest.
“Twenty-six weeks,” I gasped.
“Have you experienced any vaginal bleeding?”
“I don’t know. I don't think so.”
“Are you experiencing abdominal pain?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me exactly where the pain is?”
“Everywhere.”
That answer terrified me more than anything else. It wasn't a localized ache; it was a deep, pervasive agony that seemed to radiate from my very core. They quickly placed fetal monitors across my stomach, started a wide-bore IV in my arm, and kept me strictly on my left side to maintain blood flow to the baby.
My father was firmly told he was not allowed in the back of the ambulance.
Good, I thought through the haze of pain. Medicine needed to come first. Family drama could wait.
As the heavy ambulance doors were slamming shut, I caught one final, lingering glimpse of Victor standing in the driveway.
He was in handcuffs. He wasn't convicted yet. He wasn't sentenced. But he was physically separated from me. For the very first time since the day I had foolishly married him, he could not reach me.
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I started crying uncontrollably.
The paramedic holding my IV line gently wiped my face, thinking my tears were solely from the physical pain. It partly was. But mostly, it was the overwhelming realization of the space between us. Victor could no longer touch me. I had completely forgotten what that kind of safety actually felt like.
