Chapter 5: Three More Weeks

The doctor said the word preeclampsia four times before I understood it was about me.

My blood pressure was one-sixty over a hundred and ten.

There was protein in my urine, and my hands and feet had swollen overnight.

"It's the kind of thing we catch early and manage," the doctor said. "You'll stay with us."

"Magnesium, a monitor on the baby, and absolutely no stress."

She looked at the two men in my room as she said the last part.

My father sat in the vinyl recliner by the window with his boots still on.

Dalton stood against the wall by the door, and he had not sat down once in six hours.

"I'm his wife," I told the doctor. "I'm just not sure about the rest of it."

"The rest of it can wait until the baby's safe," she said, and left.

The magnesium made my skin hot and my head thick.

A nurse came in every hour to take my pressure and tell me I was doing great, which I did not believe.

At eleven my father got up, kissed my forehead, and said he needed to move his truck before it was ticketed.

He looked at Dalton on his way out.

"She wakes up, you get the nurse," my father said. "She cries, you get the nurse. She says go, you go."

"Yes, sir."

"If she says stay, you don't open your mouth about anything else."

"Yes, sir."

My father left.

The room went quiet except for the monitor, which beat out our daughter's heart at a hundred and forty-two.

Dalton did not move from the wall.

"You can sit," I said.

"I don't want you to think I'm assuming."

"Dalton. Sit down before you fall down."

He crossed to the recliner and sat on its very edge.

I watched him for a minute in the blue light of the monitor.

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