On Thanksgiving, My Husband Left Me 7 Months Pregnant at a Highway Rest Stop novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Thirty Weeks

Piper gives birth alone to a three-pound daughter, the trooper brings a charger at two a.m., and at four Garrett and Marjorie arrive with a social worker Marjorie called on her.

They wheeled me into the operating room a little after midnight.

The anesthesiologist told me to curl forward over my belly and hold still.

I held still the way I had on the plaza floor, by counting the tiles in my head.

Nobody was in the room who knew my middle name.

A nurse with kind eyes stood by my head and said, "I'm staying right here."

She didn't have to. I thanked her anyway.

I felt tugging, then pressure, then a long hollow silence.

Then I heard a sound.

"She's crying," the nurse said. "That's a good sign, Piper. That's a very good sign."

They held her up over the curtain for one second.

She was the size of a bag of flour, red and wrinkled.

She had a full head of dark hair stuck flat to her skull.

"Three pounds, eleven ounces," someone called.

"Can I touch her?" I asked.

"Not yet, hon. She needs to go to the NICU. They'll bring her to you when they can."

The team wrapped her in plastic and carried her out the door.

I tried to turn my head to follow, and the room swam.

The nurse held a cup of ice chips to my mouth and told me to rest.

I did not cry.

I lay there and thought, she's alive, and I did that by myself.

They moved me to a recovery room at two o'clock.

It had a window with the blinds shut and a chair nobody would use.

A man knocked at the open door.

Jonas Kessler stood there in his uniform, with a paper bag in one hand and a phone charger in the other.

"I went off shift at midnight," he said. "I can leave if you want."

"Stay," I said. It came out before I thought.

He put the charger in the wall and plugged my phone into it.

"The gift shop was closed," he said. "The vending machine had crackers and a toothbrush kit. I took both."

I almost laughed, and it hurt where they'd cut me.

"My daughter's three pounds eleven," I told him. "She's in the NICU."

"Is she okay?"

"They don't know yet."

He sat down in the chair nobody would use.

He did not tell me it would be fine, and I was grateful.

"I put out a note on the gray SUV," he said. "Not a stop. Just so the post knows the plate if anyone calls about you."

"Did he call?"

"No."

"He texted me."

I held up the screen.

I had not answered either message.

Jonas read them with his eyes narrowing, and said nothing.

"Don't tell him where I am," I said.

"I won't. It's your call."

He stayed until nearly three, in the chair, with his hat on his knee.

When he stood to go, he asked if anyone was supposed to be with me.

"No," I said. "I think that's what happened tonight."

"I'll come by tomorrow," he said. "If you'll let me."

I watched him go down the hall in the dim light.

Then I fell asleep with the phone charging against my hip.

I woke to voices.

The window blinds had gone gray.

A clock said 4:12.

Garrett was standing at the end of my bed.

His coat was wet, and his face was gray with tiredness.

Behind him stood Marjorie in her camel coat, and his sister with her arms crossed.

Dennis was not with them.

"Piper." Garrett's voice cracked. "I have been calling hospitals since eight o'clock. You could have told me."

"I told you the doctor said no long drives."

"You walked off. We came back and the plaza was empty. Do you have any idea what that was like?"

"I know exactly what it was like."

He flinched.

Marjorie came around the side of the bed and put her hand on my ankle, over the blanket.

"The baby," she said. "Is she all right?"

"She's in the NICU."

"Oh, thank God." She said it warmly, to the ceiling. "Garrett, we're going to see her."

"No," I said.

I surprised myself.

"Just me. I'm the only name on her visitor list. Nobody else."

Marjorie's face did not change.

"Sweetheart, you've had a terrible night," she said. "Let us help."

She turned and went out into the hall.

I heard her talking low with someone at the nurses' station.

Garrett sat down on the edge of my bed.

"I'm sorry about the plaza," he said. "I'm sorry I said you always wait. That came out wrong."

"It came out exactly right."

He opened his mouth.

The door opened before he could answer.

A woman in a gray blazer stood there with a clipboard, and a security guard behind her.

"Mrs. Tolliver?" she said. "I'm from social work. Your mother-in-law has asked us to evaluate whether you're mentally well enough to care for your baby."

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