Chapter 20: High Risk

Clara's POV

The ambulance took nine minutes to reach the ballroom doors and eleven to reach Westbrook General.

I rode in the back with Lydia's hand crushing mine.

"It hurts," she kept saying. "It keeps coming in waves."

"I know. Breathe."

"Don't let it come yet. It's too soon."

"It's not coming. Look at me. It's not coming tonight."

I did not know that.

I said it in the voice I used for a dog with a snake bite.

She believed me, because in ten years I had never lied to her.

They took her straight through the doors of the maternity wing.

I was left in a corridor with blood on the skirt of my red dress and the paramedic's clipboard still in my hand.

Miles came in behind me with his tie pulled loose.

He did not say anything.

He put a hand on the small of my back, and it stayed there, warm through the silk, and I leaned into it.

For a minute that was all there was.

A doctor with grey hair came out at ten past eleven.

"She's stable," she said. "She went into early labor, about twenty-four weeks. We've given her medication to stop the contractions, and they have."

"The baby?"

"Heartbeat's strong. But she cannot go home."

"She stays flat in this wing for two weeks at least. If the contractions start again, we can't promise anything."

"Can I see her?"

"One person at a time. Are you the family?"

"I'm her sister," I said.

It was the first time I had said it out loud to a stranger.

It sounded like a plain word.

Lydia lay in the bed in a hospital gown with small blue squares.

A monitor was strapped across her stomach, and a drip ran into her arm.

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