Car Crash Neglect Christmas Divorce novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Mile Marker Forty-One
Thirty-three weeks pregnant and bleeding in a wrecked ride, Claire calls her husband and he tells her to go with the paramedics because he is with Brandy; she stops asking him to come, and the paramedic tells her Dean is in the same building.
The rideshare slid into the guardrail at four in the afternoon on Christmas Eve.
I was thirty-three weeks pregnant, belted into the back seat, and my hand came away from between my legs red.
The driver was saying "Oh God, oh God" to the steering wheel.
My head had hit the window. The glass beside my ear was cracked in a white star.
I called my husband.
"Dean, we crashed. I'm bleeding. Please come."
"Claire? Okay. Where are you?"
I read him the location off my phone. My teeth were chattering so hard I had to say it twice.
"The driver is calling an ambulance," I said. "My stomach hurts, Dean."
"Okay. Okay, listen. Let the paramedics take you, they're the professionals."
"Please come."
"Brandy's parents just pulled in, Claire. I can't walk out on her while they're still finding parking."
I looked at the blood on my palm.
"Her wrist is scraped," I said.
"She's shaken up. She's had a really bad day." His voice went soft, the voice he used when he wanted me to stop talking. "I'll come as soon as I can. You're fine. Just stay calm."
He hung up.
He had been supposed to pick me up at two. I'd finished my appointment at the clinic, and we were going to finish painting the nursery together.
At twenty minutes past two he had texted: "Brandy had a little accident in the parking lot. Taking her to urgent care. Get a ride home. I'll see you there."
Brandy was his college girlfriend. She called him every time something went wrong in her life, and something went wrong in her life about once a month.
So I had ordered a car.
On the ultrasound picture from that morning, our daughter had her fist against her cheek.
I had brought it to show Dean.
It lay in the footwell now, beyond my reach, with a drop of blood on one corner.
The sirens got loud.
A door opened beside me, and cold air came in with the flashing lights.
A man in a navy jacket crouched at the frame. He had a tired jaw and gray eyes, and a stethoscope hung around his neck.
"Ma'am, I'm Doran. I'm a paramedic. Can you tell me your name?"
"Claire Gruber. I'm thirty-three weeks. I'm bleeding."
"Okay, Claire. Look at me, not at the blood. Does your stomach feel hard?"
"Yes."
"Does it come and go, or is it constant?"
"Constant."
His face didn't change, but he said something over his shoulder, and a second medic ran for the stretcher.
My phone was still lit in my hand, with Dean's name at the top of the call log.
"Is somebody coming to meet you at the hospital?" Doran asked.
"My husband."
"Do you want me to call him?"
"I just did."
Doran took the phone out of my fingers, very gently, because my hand was shaking too hard to hold it. He glanced at the screen.
"Is he on his way?"
"He's with his ex-girlfriend," I said. "At urgent care. She scraped her wrist."
Doran looked at me for a second.
Then he looked at the blood on the seat, and he didn't say anything about it.
"Keep your eyes on me," he said. "We're going to move you."
They lifted me out with a board under my back and a collar at my neck.
Something tugged at my throat as they turned me. A thin brass key on a chain had come out of my sweater.
My father gave it to me the week before he died. He told me to keep it for a rainy day.
Dean liked to tease me about it.
"Your lucky nothing key," he would say, and tap it with one finger.
"Don't take that," I said to the medic, who was reaching for my collar.
"I'm not. It stays on you."
Inside the ambulance it was warm, and everything smelled like plastic and antiseptic.
Doran put a line in my arm on the second try and apologized for the first.
"Heart rate on the baby is one-sixty," the other medic said.
Doran's shoulders came down a little.
"That's good, Claire. That's a good number."
The ambulance pulled out.
I turned my head as far as the collar let me.
The ultrasound picture was still in the footwell of the wrecked car, under a stranger's coat.
"Wait," I said. "My picture. My daughter."
"I'll get it," Doran said. "I'll bring it to you, I promise."
I closed my eyes.
Today I had asked him to come because I was bleeding, and he had told me to stay calm.
I opened my eyes.
"Doran, will you keep my phone for me?"
"Sure."
"Don't give it back to me tonight. If it rings, don't tell me who it is."
He put it in his jacket pocket.
So I stopped asking my husband to come.
The ambulance turned, and a nurse's voice on the radio said something I couldn't follow.
Doran leaned down so I could hear him.
"Claire, we're about two minutes out. Mercy General has a delivery floor on the fourth floor, and your team is waiting for you."
"Okay."
"Just so you know," he said. "The urgent care your husband mentioned is in the same building. It's on the second floor."
I stared at the ceiling light.
My husband was two floors below the room where my baby would be born.
And he still had not called to ask if we were alive.
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