Chapter 2 - THE ANGEL ON THE CURB
The ground was freezing through my leggings, but the cold was nothing compared to the agony tearing through my abdomen. Contractions were rolling over me every two minutes now, relentless and terrifying. I lay curled on my side in the gravel, my hands pressing against my belly, whispering prayers to a baby girl who wasn't supposed to be born for another four weeks.
Please hold on, Lily. Please, baby, just stay inside. Don't leave me.
Minutes felt like centuries. The silence of the industrial road was deafening, broken only by the sound of my own ragged, sobbing gasps. My purse, my phone, my ID, my insurance card—everything was sitting on the leather passenger seat of Eric's sedan, currently driving away toward his downtown office.
Then, the low rumble of an engine approached.
A battered silver minivan rounded the corner, slowing down as the driver spotted the shape doubled over on the curb. The brake lights flared, and a woman in her late forties bounded out of the vehicle before it had even fully stopped.
“Oh my God! Honey, are you okay?!”
Her name was Dana. She was a delivery driver taking a shortcut between warehouses. The moment she saw my hands cradling my belly and the puddle of liquid and faint crimson staining the pavement beneath me, she didn't ask questions. She threw her own coat over my shivering shoulders, pulled out her phone, and dialed 911.
“I need an ambulance on East 4th and Industrial!” Dana shouted into the speakerphone, kneeling in the dirt beside me, gently wiping the hair from my sweating face. “Pregnant woman, severe distress, looks like she’s in premature labor! Please hurry!”
While we waited for the siren, Dana held my hands. I was shaking so hard my teeth were chattering, partially from shock, partially from the brutal reality of what my husband had just done.
“Did he drop you?” Dana asked softly, her eyes tracking the dark blue fingerprint bruises already forming on my pale upper arm where Eric had snatched me out of the car.
I couldn't answer. I just wept, nodding weakly.
“I saw him,” Dana whispered, her voice hardening with a mother’s sudden, fierce rage. “I saw a dark grey sedan speed out of this alley like a bat out of hell right before I saw you. I caught part of his plate, sweetie. Don't you worry. You are not alone.”
Within six minutes, the siren wailed in the distance, growing louder until the red lights washed over the drab brick walls. Paramedics lifted me onto a gurney, hooking up IVs and monitors as Dana stood by the ambulance doors, promising she would follow us to the county hospital.
As the ambulance doors slammed shut and the vehicle accelerated, the paramedic checked my vitals, his expression grim.
“We’re dealing with high blood pressure and signs of placental abruption,” he told his partner. “Notify Trauma Bay 2. We need an OB surgeon on standby immediately.”
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I closed my eyes as the oxygen mask was placed over my face, the rhythmic beep-beep-beep of the fetal heart monitor filling the cabin. Lily was still fighting. And as the terror began to clear from my mind, a cold, hard realization settled in its place.
Eric hadn't just abandoned me. He had left our daughter to die for the sake of a promotion. And if we survived this day, he was going to pay for every single second.
