Chapter 4 - ELEVEN MINUTES
I counted the ceiling lights because I couldn't remember my own address.
One over the reception desk. Two above the conference table. A third that flickered whenever someone used the copier.
My phone had fallen under a chair. I stretched for it and nearly passed out.
Warm liquid crept into my hair. I pressed a hand against my head and looked at my fingers. Red.
"Alex," I said, although he'd already left.
I don't know why I called him. Habit, probably.
A text from Maddy appeared on the floor beside me, upside down: Picking up bagels. You want your usual?
I tried to type. My finger dragged across the screen and made a string of nonsense.
Then I remembered the baby.
"No," I whispered. "No, no, no."
I put both hands over my stomach. There was nothing to feel yet, not from the outside. That didn't stop me.
Somewhere down the hall, a printer woke up.
Maddy was the one who found me. She dropped the paper bag so fast the bagels rolled across the floor.
"Oh my God. Erin? Can you hear me?"
I wanted to say yes. I wanted to tell her not to move me. Instead I heard her voice, cracking, tell the dispatcher my name and the building address.
"She's bleeding. She hit her head, I think. She's—wait." Maddy looked at me. "Erin, are you pregnant?"
I nodded once.
"She's pregnant," Maddy said, louder. "Please hurry."
A paramedic cut away the collar of my blouse to check my neck. Another knelt beside me and asked if I knew what day it was.
"Anniversary," I muttered.
He glanced at his partner. "Okay. Stay with us."
At the emergency department, the nurses moved fast but their voices stayed strangely calm. One asked about medications. One lifted my wrist for a blood-pressure cuff. A doctor wanted to know how I'd fallen.
"My husband," I said.
"Was he with you?"
"He pushed me."
The doctor stopped writing for one moment, then nodded. "I'm going to document that. Right now I need to check your head and the pregnancy."
The ultrasound cart came in. I fixed my eyes on the doctor's face, not the monitor.
"Please," I said. "Just tell me."
A pulsing sound filled the room. It dipped. The doctor's mouth tightened.
"There is a heartbeat," she said. "But we're seeing some bleeding, and we're concerned. We need to watch you closely."
I had heard there is a heartbeat once before. Last time it had been the beginning of a goodbye.
"Is the baby going to die?"
She didn't promise me anything she couldn't know. "We have a team here, Erin. We're going to take care of both of you."
Maddy stood at the doorway with my shoes in her hands. She'd put my white anniversary roses in a plastic grocery bag. Some of the petals were brown from the blood.
She held up my phone. "Laura's on her way. I tried Alex. Twice."
"Don't," I whispered.
Then Maddy looked down at the call log, and something in her expression hardened.
"That's weird," she said. "The Bennett gatehouse called him four times after you fell. He didn't answer any of them."
I stared at her.
May you like
Because the estate's security line only called Alex for one kind of emergency.
Something had happened at home, too.
