Chapter 6 - TWELVE WEEKS
The first thing I saw in the emergency room was a strip of fluorescent light running across the ceiling. The second was Laura, standing beside my bed with a paper cup in her hand.
"Hi," she said, too brightly. "You look terrible."
"You always say that."
"Not always. Sometimes I say your bangs look terrible."
I tried to laugh. Pain stabbed behind my eyes.
The doctor introduced herself as Naomi Bell. She had silver at her temples and a pen clipped to the neckline of her scrubs.
"You have a concussion and a scalp wound. Your shoulder is bruised, but nothing's broken."
I touched my stomach. She saw it.
"You're pregnant?"
"I think so. Twelve weeks, maybe. I hadn't had the scan."
Dr. Bell asked Laura to step outside for a private medical history. I suddenly wished she'd stay. I told the doctor about the positive test, the other pregnancy, the stairs, and the blood I'd seen on my sleeve. I skipped the part where Alex had said he was afraid of the police. I still wanted to protect him. That fact makes me angrier now than anything Paige said.
A technician brought in an ultrasound machine. Cold gel touched my stomach. A gray shape appeared on the monitor.
The technician pressed a button, frowned at the image, and adjusted the probe. I couldn't read her face. She was probably thinking about the settings. I was thinking about the last time a room had gone quiet like that.
"Please," I said. "Just tell me."
"There's a heartbeat."
A fast, fluttering sound filled the room. My mouth opened, but I couldn't make words. I held my hand over my eyes while the technician printed the image.
Then Dr. Bell came back in.
"There's a small area of bleeding," she said. "We need to watch it. A heartbeat is encouraging, but you still need follow-up care."
"Is my baby going to die?"
She sat on the stool instead of pretending not to hear. "I don't know. Right now, the pregnancy is continuing. We'll take this one day at a time."
Laura came back carrying my white box. Mr. Salazar had found it by the staircase and given it to the paramedics. The silver ribbon was dark at one corner. She didn't tell me what it was stained with.
"Alex called," she said.
"When?"
"Four times. I didn't answer."
I looked at the tiny socks beneath the tissue paper. They looked smaller than I remembered.
At the nurses' station, a uniformed officer waited to ask what had happened. I opened my mouth to tell him about Alex's hand on my wrist.
Then Laura showed me the voicemail he'd left her.
"Erin lost her footing," Alex said. "It was an accident. Tell her I'm sorry I couldn't stay."
May you like
He hadn't just left me. He had already decided what happened.
