Chapter 4: Born Free

The paramedics lifted me onto a stretcher while forty guests parted to let it through.

"I'm riding with her," Palmer said, and reached for the rail.

"No, sir," the sergeant said. "You're a witness. You'll follow in your own car, after you've given me your statement."

"She's my wife."

"Then you'll want to be very careful what you say next."

His hand dropped.

Behind him, my mother stood in the foyer with her purse against her chest and two officers on either side of her.

She did not look at me as I passed.

The ambulance doors shut.

A paramedic taped a line into my arm, and I stared at the ceiling and tried to breathe.

Last time, I had come into labor in a holding cell.

A guard had locked a metal cuff around my left wrist and chained it to the bed rail.

I had begged them to take it off for just one push, and the guard had said no.

"Ma'am?" the paramedic said. "Your heart rate just jumped. Are you scared?"

"Yes," I said. "Is there anything on my wrist?"

She looked.

"Just the IV."

"Okay," I whispered. "Okay."

At the hospital, a nurse met us at the doors, and so did the sergeant, who had followed the ambulance.

"I'll be outside your room," she told me. "Nobody gets in who you don't approve."

"My husband."

"Not unless you say."

"I don't say."

She nodded once and took her post by the door.

Finbar arrived ten minutes later with a camera bag and a plastic cup of coffee he had clearly bought without thinking.

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