Chapter 4: Harborview

Ray got to the porch steps before I could answer her.

He didn't say a word to Alyssa.

He just looked at her for a long second.

She stopped smiling and went inside.

"Hospital," Ray said. "Now. I'm not asking."

This time I let him.

Harborview's emergency room was full of Friday night.

A drunk with a split eyebrow. A kid with a fishhook in his thumb.

The nurse at triage took one look at my stomach and my hands and stood up.

"How far along?"

"Twenty-two weeks. I think. What's today?"

"October sixteenth."

"Twenty-two weeks," I said.

Then I couldn't stop shaking.

They put me in a bed and ran two bags of fluid into my arm.

The doctor was a tired woman with her hair in a knot.

She X-rayed my ankle.

"Hairline fracture of the fibula," she said. "Plus a bad sprain. You walked on this?"

"I climbed a tree on it."

She didn't laugh.

She looked at my fingers, the three nails split below the quick, and she cleaned them herself.

Then she wheeled in the ultrasound.

The gel was cold.

The screen was gray and grainy, and then it wasn't.

There was a curled-up shape in the middle of it.

And a flicker.

Fast. Steady.

"There's your heartbeat," the doctor said. "Good and strong."

I put my hand over my mouth.

I'd been holding my breath for seven days, and I let it out all at once.

"Baby's measuring a little small," she said. "We'll keep an eye on it. But that's a fighter in there."

She printed the picture and put it in my good hand.

Then she sat down on the stool and lowered her voice.

"Hannah. The nurse said somebody left you out there."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Betrayed by My Fiancé: Left Pregnant in the Rainforest from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.