Chapter 8 - The Ambulance Ride
|
The courtroom went silent.
Then chaos returned all at once. The bailiff handcuffed Beatrice as she screamed that I had staged the blood. Malcolm stood frozen, pale as paper, as though he had finally realized the monster he represented had chosen a courtroom full of witnesses for her crime. Elise knelt beside me, one hand on my shoulder, whispering, “Stay awake. Stay awake, Nora.” Someone cleared the gallery. Someone called for medical help. My father took off his robe and folded it beneath my head, his hands moving with desperate tenderness.
“I’m sorry,” he kept saying. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
I wanted to tell him not now. I wanted to say there would be time later. I wanted to tell him Gabriel had wanted to write to him, that our son had kicked during the hearing, that I had missed him every year and been too proud to admit it. But the pain was swallowing words.
Paramedics arrived. The world became movement: straps, voices, scissors cutting fabric, a fetal monitor pressed to my stomach, a medic calling out numbers I could not interpret but understood from their faces were not good. My father climbed into the ambulance with me without asking permission. If anyone tried to stop him, I did not hear it.
Inside the ambulance, he held my hand with both of his.
“I should have come for you,” he said, tears running freely now. “I should have found you after your mother died. I should have called when I heard you married him. I should have been there when Gabriel died. Nora, I let pride steal my daughter.”
I turned my head toward him. The ceiling lights flashed as the ambulance moved.
“I chose him,” I whispered.
“I know.”
“You hated him.”
“I feared losing you.”
“You did lose me.”
His face twisted. “Yes.”
The fetal monitor crackled. A medic adjusted something. The tone that had been rapid became uneven. Then, suddenly, frighteningly slow.
The medic’s voice sharpened. “Fetal heart rate dropping.”
My father looked up. “What does that mean?”
“We need to move faster.”
The siren wailed louder.
I gripped his hand. “Save him.”
May you like
He leaned close. “You both are going to live.”
But his eyes told me he was praying, not promising.
