Chapter 2
Part 2: Preterm Panic
The black leather duffel bag slipped from my hand, thudding heavily onto the bedroom floor as I rushed to Clara’s side. The toxic suspicion that had clouded my judgment just moments before evaporated entirely, leaving behind a crushing wave of self-loathing. How could I have looked at my suffering wife and imagined betrayal?
"I'm here, Clara! I'm right here," I cried, dropping to my knees on the edge of the mattress. I wrapped my arms around her trembling frame, feeling the intense, rock-hard tightness of her abdomen. Her skin was burning hot, covered in a thick layer of cold sweat.
"The baby..." she choked out, her fingernails digging deep into my forearms as another wave of pain ripped through her torso. "Something is wrong, Ethan. The pain... it hasn't stopped for hours. I tried to get dressed to go to the car... I couldn't think... I put the gown on wrong... I couldn't breathe..."
"We're going to the hospital right now," I said, my voice forced into a calm authority I didn't actually possess. I reached over to grab her phone from the nightstand to call 911, but my eyes caught the source of the shattered wedding portrait. On the bedside table sat a heavy, solid-silver water carafe, overturned and dented. Clara had thrown it at the wall in a desperate, blind moment of agony, trying to make enough noise to alert our neighbors through the shared drywall when her legs had failed her. The wet streak across the frame wasn't blood from an altercation—it was the deep red pomegranate juice she had been drinking to stave off her severe nausea, now dripping down the broken glass like a gruesome omen.
"I called my mother first..." Clara wept, her head resting heavily against my shoulder as I lifted her off the bed. "When the pains started at noon... she told me to stop exaggerating. She said I was just looking for attention because you were away on business. She told me to stay in bed and stop making a scene."
A cold, dangerous fury ignited in my chest. My mother. The woman who had filled my head with subtle doubts about Clara for months, the woman whose poisonous warnings had caused me to hesitate at the doorway for sixty precious seconds, had actively ignored my wife’s medical emergency.
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"Don't speak, sweetheart. Save your energy," I whispered, lifting her carefully into my arms. Despite her advanced pregnancy, she felt terrifyingly light, her body completely spent from hours of unassisted labor.
As I carried her down the dark hallway and out to the car, my phone began to buzz in my pocket. The caller ID displayed my mother's name: Eleanor. I ignored it, slamming the car door shut and shifting the vehicle into drive. The tires screeched against the pavement as I raced toward the Northwestern Memorial emergency room, the flashing city lights outside turning into a blurred streak of absolute panic.
