My Husband Dismissed Seven Ransom Calls as AI novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Jane Doe

Elora arrives with a broken jaw and no ID; Janelle recognizes her, cuts off her ring and pockets it, drapes her face for the surgeon who never looks, and whispers that he will never know; awake on the table, Elora taps the lullaby on the rail, and her husband taps it back with the second bar wrong.

They cut off my cardigan in the trauma bay at 10:12.

My jaw was broken and my mouth was full of blood. I could not make a word.

I could hear everything.

"Female, thirty-four weeks, hit by a pickup on County Road 12," the paramedic said. "Hands were zip-tied. No ID, no phone."

"Jane Doe, then," someone said.

I tried to say my name. A wet cough was all that came out.

"Baby's heart rate is dropping," a nurse said. "Placenta is separating. Where is Erickson?"

"Finishing in OR Two. Two minutes."

I knew white clogs when I saw them. These stopped at the foot of my gurney.

"Janelle Pratt, head nurse," she said. "I've got her."

She leaned over me. Her eyes met mine, and I watched her know me.

"Hi, Elora," she said, so low that only I could hear.

Then she straightened and spoke to the room. "Her hand is swelling. The ring has to come off."

She took the trauma shears and cut the copper wire.

I felt the shears close on the wire, and then nothing.

She dropped my father's ring into her pocket.

"It goes in a bag with her things," she told the room.

I tried to kick. My legs would not move. Somebody tightened a strap across my knees.

"Airway's too swollen for a tube," the anesthesiologist said. "Jaw's gone. We do the section under a spinal and she stays awake."

"Awake?" a resident said.

"She can't talk. She can hear."

They rolled me down the hall. Ceiling lights went by in pairs.

I tracked them with my eyes, fighting to stay awake.

No wallet. No phone. A face swollen past anything my own mother would know.

The only person in that building who could say my name was pushing the gurney.

She said nothing.

OR Two had music playing. I knew the song before the doors closed.

Track one of The Elora Mix. Our first song.

Four years ago I picked it because it was the first song we ever danced to.

Hands lifted me onto the table. The spinal went in, a cold line down my back, and the bottom half of me turned to nothing.

A blue drape went up across my chest.

Then Janelle took a second blue towel and laid it over the top of my head, over my eyes and forehead, until all I could see was blue.

"Dr. Erickson doesn't like faces," she said to the room, and she tucked it down at my temples.

She bent close to my ear.

"He doesn't know it's you," she whispered. "He never will. Hold still and let him work."

I screamed. It was a long wet nothing, and the anesthesiologist said, "She's agitated, give her a minute."

The doors opened.

"Who do I have?" Ansel said.

My husband's voice. Tired, steady, a little hoarse from the long day.

I had never been so glad to hear it, and I had never been so afraid.

"Jane Doe, thirty-four weeks, abruption, no ID, broken jaw," Janelle said. "She's awake. Spinal only."

"Awake," Ansel said. "Okay."

I heard water running. I heard him scrub, a sound I know better than my own front door.

"Ma'am, I'm Dr. Erickson," he said. "I'm going to get your baby out. You're going to feel pressure, and that's all."

He said it to the ceiling, as he says it to everyone.

He did not come around to the head of the table.

He did not lift the towel.

I wanted to tell him our daughter's name. I wanted to tell him mine.

All I had was my right hand, which was free of the straps, lying on the rail.

I laid it flat and tapped.

One, two, three, four. The lullaby. Four bars, the way I made it in March.

Nobody noticed. The monitors were loud, and the surgical team was moving.

I tapped it once more and counted the silence after each bar.

Somewhere under all of it, Pip kicked once, weakly.

I was her mother and I could not even say so.

"Knife," Ansel said. "Tell me when you can feel this."

His fingertips came down on my belly through the drape. Two taps, testing the block.

I felt the pressure only. The rest of me was gone.

I tapped the lullaby a third time, and this time I made it loud.

The taps from his fingers stopped.

For one second the room kept going around him. Instruments. The song. A monitor beeping too fast.

Then his hand came back down, light, on the top of my belly.

He tapped the lullaby.

One. Two. Three. Four.

He got the second bar wrong.

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