Baby! Heartbeat!
“—and the more you panic, the harder it is to get the monitor hooked back up.”
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. The nurse took her through the motions, and Laura calmed down. Inhale— and she heard more breaths. Her eyes slowly focused and found Josie, Dylan and Mike standing in a line behind the nurse, all expanding their diaphragms when she inhaled, and whooshing out air when she exhaled.
It was kind of creepy.
Buh bum buh bum buh bum buh bum buh bum buh bum, the machines spat out, the sound of little horse hooves a huge relief to everyone in the room. “There she is!” the nurse crowed, reading the numbers. “One forty. Just where we want her.”
“Where am I?” Laura asked, her condition sinking in. Hospital? IV? Baby monitor? What had happened? Oh, God. The fire. Her apartment. Sitting up, hearing the alarms, people thumping and the rush of fear that made her just hide. She had just started to slide out from under the covers as Dylan shouted for her, mind remembering the baby and helping to override the bizarre panic she’d been stuck in.
Freezing, just like she had when her grandparents had died in the fire in their house the summer she lived with them—
“The fire!” she shouted, then coughed uncontrollably. The horse hooves ramped up suddenly, nurse frowning.
Dylan came to the end of the bed and rested a hand on her foot. “It’s OK. You’re safe now.”#p#分页标题#e#
She struggled to sit up, the nurse’s hands going to her shoulder and hip, pressing. “Please stay where you are, Laura. We’re still not sure why you lost consciousness and we need to make sure you rest on your left side.”
“Why?”
“Better blood flow throughout your body,” Josie piped up. One look of assurance from her was all Laura needed; Mike added his gentle touch to Dylan’s, taking the other foot, and the horse hooves went from a racing gallop to a steady canter.
“Much better,” the nurse said, soothing voice meant to praise. “You guys have a magic touch.”
Yes, they do, Laura thought, her belly tensing suddenly. “What’s that?” One of the monitors began beeping.
“A mild contraction,” the nurse answered. “You’ve had a handful since they brought you in a few hours ago.”
“Contraction!” she rasped. “I’m only nineteen weeks along! I can’t—” Why had she frozen? What kind of mother doesn’t get a fight or flight response the second her baby is in danger? Fear had kept her in hiding in her closet that night twenty years before, staying until it was too late for grandma and grandpa, a firefighter finding her and carrying her down a long ladder from her second-story window. Of all the nights to have a sleepover with them; her mother had never been the same and, in some ways, it had killed her, too, to lose her parents like that.
So what kind of mother could Laura be if she just...froze? Instinct should have made her leap out of bed and out the door. Old trauma made her useless.
The pillow was wet before she knew it, silent tears rolling from both eyes, pooling at the bridge of her nose before spilling over. Josie came closer and took her hand.
“You did a great job, Laura,” she soothed. Mike and Dylan shared a puzzled look.
“I froze!” Laura wailed.
“Hey,” Josie said, gently forcing Laura to stare directly into her eyes. “You did nothing wrong. It was totally understandable that you froze at first, but you did get started. You were trying to get out. And you did what Dylan said and you’re safe now and the baby is fine.”
“Is she? Are you sure?” Laura turned her attention to the nurse, who was now writing rapidly in Laura’s medical chart.
The nurse looked up and smiled. “So far, so good. We need to monitor you for another day and make sure you didn’t inhale too much smoke. Plus, the polyhydramnios puts the baby at risk in general, so we’re running some basic tests to check on that.”
Laura could see Dylan and Mike exchange a worried look. So much to tell them. A flood of overwhelm hit her, hard, like a wave of exhaustion. How could she unravel this mess? Why had she waited so long?
Was this what they felt like when they waited to tell her about them—and about their money? One day seemed to have blended into another and now here she was, both men staring at her with plenty of questions—as if she had all the answers. A flash of sympathy for their delay in confessing the truth—both times— coursed through her. Maybe she’d been too harsh. Perhaps she should have put herself in their place and tried to see their choices through her own eyes.