My Husband Hung Up on Me the Night I Gave Birth novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Fourteen Seconds
Erin calls her husband from a hospital garage while a man closes in, and Ryan hangs up at his ex's birthday dinner; she gives birth in a kidnapper's van, Gwen takes the baby, and Erin walks past Ryan at the hospital without his seeing her face.
The night my daughter was born, my husband hung up on me.
It was 11:47 p.m., and I was crossing Level 3 of the St. Mary's parking garage to my car.
I was thirty-seven weeks pregnant. My last childbirth class had just let out.
I had stayed to carry the mats to the supply closet, because nobody was waiting for me at home.
I had gone to every class alone. The other women had husbands kneeling behind them.
I had a throw pillow. By the third week, the instructor had stopped asking where my husband was.
A man in a gray hoodie stepped out of the elevator and stood in front of the doors.
He didn't look at his phone or at the cars. He looked at me.
I turned and ran for the ramp. He caught up and slapped my phone out of my hand.
It skidded across the concrete and under a parked sedan.
Then my first real contraction came, and I dropped to one knee.
I still had my watch. I pressed my husband's name.
Ryan was a detective. He'd had the back engraved: So you can always reach me.
Since February, when his ex-fiancée Gwen Dearing moved back to town, he'd answered for her first.
The watch buzzed against my wrist. Call Declined.
I pressed it again. Call Declined.
The man in the hoodie started toward me. He didn't hurry.
On the third try, Ryan picked up.
Behind him I heard glasses clinking, a piano track, and a woman laughing. It was Gwen's birthday dinner.
"Ryan, a man followed me down here," I said. "He's twenty feet away."
"Not tonight, Erin." He sounded flat and worn out. "You dragged me off a shift last Friday over a false alarm. Gwen said you might pull something like this."
Last Friday I'd had cramps at thirty-six weeks and phoned him from the maternity desk. They stopped by midnight, and he hadn't forgiven me for it.
"He's right here," I said. "Please. I think the baby's coming."
"Nobody's following you. If it's contractions, call your doctor. I'll be home in an hour."
He hung up.
The screen read Call Ended 0:14.
I dialed 911 on my watch with a shaking thumb. The man grabbed my wrist and wrenched it behind my back.
The watch face hit the concrete and cracked across.
He clamped a hand over my mouth and hauled me to a white van parked by the stairwell.
On the way, he crouched, fished my phone out from under the sedan, and pressed my thumb to the screen to unlock it.
Then he slid it into his pocket.
My daughter was born at 12:58 a.m. in the back of that van.
When she cried, I found the side button on my watch and held it down to record.
I wanted somebody to know she had existed, even if nobody ever found me.
"Hi, Bean," I whispered. "I'm your mama. Don't be scared. Your daddy's coming."
I still believed that.
The man took her out of my arms.
He held her against his chest with one hand and made a call with the other.
"It's done," he said. "Tell Ms. Dearing it's a girl."
I stopped breathing.
Gwen. The woman at my husband's table.
He hung up and bent down until his face was an inch from mine.
"Ms. Dearing has a message. Talk to any cop, any one, and you never hear this baby cry again."
He smiled.
"Your husband's a cop. Think about who's sitting next to him tonight."
He left me behind a fenced construction lot off Route 6.
A work crew found me at 5:40 a.m., alive by a few minutes.
I woke up two days later in a room on the fourth floor of St. Mary's, with a tube in my arm and a plastic bracelet on my wrist.
JANE DOE. RM 412.
"Can you tell us your name, honey?" the nurse asked.
I knew it. I didn't say it.
The woman who had my baby had sat at my husband's table.
The last thing he'd said to me was nobody's following you, and he'd said it because she told him I'd lie.
For all I knew, he had helped her.
And if any cop heard my name, Gwen would hear it by lunch.
So I told no one.
Behind that fence, I had made one promise to myself before I passed out.
I would never call my husband again.
At 6:05 on the third morning, I took my watch out of the belongings bag, pulled a set of scrubs off a supply cart, and left the bracelet on the pillow.
I walked out of Room 412 with my hand pressed against my stomach.
The elevator opened, and my husband stepped out reading a file.
His shoulder bumped mine.
"Sorry, ma'am. You okay? You're bleeding through your..."
"I'm fine," I told the floor. My voice came out a whisper. "Night shift."
"Detective Tierney?" the charge nurse called. "You've got the Jane Doe from 412 now. Hal's out sick."
He turned toward her.
"Somebody get a nurse to look at your coworker," he said over his shoulder.
He walked down the hall to my room with my chart open in his hands.
My husband had just been handed my case, and he had not once looked at my face.
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