He Texted Me Divorce, So I Took 20 Million and Vanished novel · Chapter 10 of 32

Chapter 10: Bed Rest

Libby got to me first.

She took one look at the stool and grabbed her phone.

"Ambulance," she said into it. "Hutchins Nursery, Spurwink Avenue. She's twenty-four weeks with quadruplets and she's bleeding."

A customer brought me a folded tarp to sit on.

Somebody else ran for water.

Libby crouched in front of me and held both my hands.

"Look at me. Not at the floor. At me."

"Libby, it's too early."

"I know."

"It's way too early. They're the size of ears of corn."

"I know, honey. Look at me."

The ambulance came in ten minutes.

I know because I watched the clock on the greenhouse wall the whole time.

The paramedics lifted me onto a stretcher in front of the lupines and half of Cape Elizabeth.

Libby climbed in beside me.

The doors shut.

"Call Leo," I said.

She looked at me.

"Call him," I said. "They're his too."

She called him.

He beat the ambulance to the hospital.

I don't know how. The bait shop was further away than the nursery.

When they wheeled me through the emergency doors, he was standing in the hallway with his car keys still in his hand.

His face was gray.

He didn't say anything.

He just walked beside the stretcher all the way to the elevator, and when I reached out without thinking, he took my hand.

The next six hours were a blur of monitors and needles and people in blue.

They gave me something in an IV that made me feel like I was on fire from the inside.

They gave me a shot in the hip to help the babies' lungs, in case.

The doctor with the gray ponytail came in at midnight in a fleece over her scrubs.

"The contractions have stopped," she said. "The bleeding's slowing. All four heartbeats are strong."

I started to cry.

Leo, in the chair beside the bed, put his head down on the mattress next to my arm.

"Here's the catch," she said. "You're not going home. You're staying right here, in this bed, until those babies come out. Could be two weeks. Could be ten. I'm hoping for ten."

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