He Missed Our Daughter's Birthday Again novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Pressure

My sister drove me to the emergency room at eleven at night with her hazards on.

She ran two red lights and told me to stop apologizing for them.

Junie was asleep in the neighbor's spare room, with my sister's phone number written on her arm in marker.

"Count your breathing," my sister said at the stoplight. "In for four."

"I'm fine."

"You're not fine. I've seen this number on a lot of people, and none of them were fine."

The triage nurse took one look at the cuff reading and had me in a wheelchair before I finished my name.

I was in a gown on a gurney within ten minutes, with a needle in my left arm and a monitor strapped to my belly.

The baby's heartbeat filled the room, fast and strong.

I closed my eyes and listened to it.

A doctor came in with tired eyes and a pen behind her ear.

She read the chart, then read my face.

"Mrs. Stromberg, your blood pressure is one hundred sixty-eight over one hundred ten."

"Is that bad?"

"It's high enough that I don't like it. Your urine has protein, and your labs are borderline."

"What does that mean?"

"It means severe preeclampsia until proven otherwise." She said it plainly, and I was grateful. "We're going to start magnesium to protect you from seizures and steroids for the baby's lungs."

"I'm thirty weeks."

"Thirty weeks and one day. That's a decent age for a boy. But if this doesn't settle, we deliver. It could be tonight. It could be in a few days."

My hand went flat to my stomach.

He kicked.

"Is your husband on his way?" she asked.

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