Chapter 8: A Heartbeat

"Don't move," I said. "Stay on the floor. Is the landlady there?"

"She's here. She's got a broom."

"Tell her to put the broom down and call an ambulance. I'm twelve minutes out."

Cal made it in nine.

He drove his pickup up Dorchester Avenue and he'd been told to ram something.

The ambulance was already at the curb.

Cal picked the brick up off the floor with his sleeve over his hand.

There was a rubber band around it, and a folded receipt under the band.

A hardware store in Brookline, paid in cash, one brick and one can of red spray paint.

Whoever threw it hadn't thought about the receipt, or hadn't thought anybody would look.

Cal put it in a bread bag and didn't say a word.

They had Roisin on a stretcher.

She was gray and sweating, holding her belly with both hands.

She saw me and started to cry for the first time since the terrace.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

"You didn't do anything." I climbed into the back of the ambulance with her. "You hear me? You didn't do one thing."

The hospital was Carney, eight minutes away.

The same two nurses from the window table were on shift.

One of them saw Roisin's name on the board and ran.

They put her in a curtained bay and turned the lights low.

A doctor came in with a portable ultrasound machine on a cart.

Roisin held my hand so hard my knuckles cracked.

The doctor squeezed cold gel on her stomach and moved the wand slowly.

The screen was gray static.

Then it wasn't.

There was a small pale shape in a black pocket.

In the middle of it something was flickering, fast.

"There," the doctor said. "That's the heartbeat. One sixty-two. That's a strong, happy heartbeat."

Roisin made a sound I'd never heard her make.

She put her free hand over her mouth.

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