Eight Months Pregnant, My Husband Locked Me in a Freezing Cabin for His Ex on Christmas Eve novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Plow Lights

Hallie breaks out through the kitchen window and flags down plow driver Eli Cardwell, who delivers her baby by the stove; the baby is born silent.

I swung a third time and the window finally gave.

Glass fell into the sink and out onto the snow.

The cold came through the gap so hard that it hurt my teeth.

A contraction tightened around my stomach and I held the counter until it let go.

It was too early, and it was too close to the last one.

I cleared the broken edges with the poker, then with the sleeve of my coat.

I climbed up on a kitchen chair and got one leg over the sill.

My belly caught on the frame.

I said every swear word I knew, and then I pushed, and I dropped into a drift up to my hips.

The snow was dry and deep and it filled my boots.

I got to my feet and looked down the ridge.

There was no moon and no house light. There was only the road, white and empty, and the sound of wind in the trees.

I made it into the yard before the next contraction folded me over.

I knelt in the snow and breathed the way the class had taught me.

Then I saw lights.

They came up the road slowly, yellow and orange, a rotating beam sweeping the trees.

A plow.

I stood up and waved both arms over my head, and I screamed.

The truck stopped thirty feet away.

A man in an orange jacket jumped down and ran to me through the drift.

"Ma'am. Ma'am, I've got you. Where are you hurt?"

"I'm not hurt. I'm in labor. My husband locked me in the cabin."

He looked at the cabin, at the broken window, at the dark.

He didn't say anything about it. He put his arm around my back and took most of my weight.

"I'm Eli Cardwell," he said. "I plow this road. I'm also an EMT. How far apart?"

"Four minutes. Maybe three."

"Okay. We're going to the truck."

He got me into the cab and turned the heater all the way up.

His radio was clipped to the dash. He picked it up and said, "Dispatch, this is Cardwell on Larch Ridge. I have a woman in active labor, thirty-four weeks. I need an ambulance."

The answer was a long hiss of static, and then a voice said, "Eli, the narrows are closed. A pine came down across the road at nine and the county crew went home. Nothing gets past it till morning."

"The squad's helicopter?"

"Grounded. It's a whiteout down here. I'm sorry."

Eli put the radio back slowly.

"How long ago did that tree come down?" I asked.

"Nine."

"Joyce told everyone you'd plow this road twice today."

He turned and looked at me.

"Joyce Garver called me at six," he said. "She said the cabin was empty for the holiday and I didn't need to bother going up past the mailbox tonight."

I stared at him.

"Then why are you here?"

"The porch light on the cabin comes on a timer. I was at the mailbox and it wasn't lit. I came up to see why."

He said it flatly and kept his eyes on the road.

I felt another contraction start, and I took his sleeve and held on.

When it passed he said, "Can you walk back into the cabin? I can't keep you in a cold truck for six hours, and there's no stove going in here. The cabin has a stove and I have wood."

"The door's locked."

"I'll use the window you made."

He got a duffel bag from behind the seat, a blanket, and an armload of split logs from the bed of the truck.

I walked beside him, one hand on his arm, back across the snow to the glass in the sink.

He went in first. He put the stove together in four minutes, with the damper wide open.

Then he came back to the window and lifted me through, carefully, with both arms under me.

The cabin was still freezing, but the stove began to tick and glow.

He laid the blanket on the floor in front of it and set the duffel down.

"I carry a delivery kit in the truck," he said. "I've done this half a dozen times. Two of them in a ditch. You are in a much better place than a ditch."

I laughed, and then I cried, and then the next contraction came.

It went on for hours.

I won't say much about those hours. He told me when to breathe. He told me when to stop pushing.

He said, "You're doing it. You're already doing it."

The first grey light was coming into the east windows when the baby came.

She slid into his hands at ten past four, small and furious, and she did not make a sound.

Eli turned her over and rubbed her back hard.

Her skin was the color of a bruise.

"Come on," he said. "Come on, sweetheart. Breathe."

I tried to sit up.

"Why isn't she crying?" I said. "Why isn't she crying?"

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