Chapter 13: Bed Rest

Eli carried me to the car himself.

I told him I could walk. He did not answer, and he did not put me down.

"Not Ellsworth," I said into his collar. "Take me anywhere else."

"The nearest emergency room is twelve minutes away," he said. "Any other is thirty."

"Then take the thirty."

"Cora, you are bleeding."

His voice cracked on the last word, and I stopped arguing.

"Ellsworth," Eli told the driver, and I did not have the strength to stop him.

The driver ran two red lights.

I held my stomach with both hands and counted the baby's heartbeat from the clinic.

I could not hear it. I only remembered it.

The doors of the Ellsworth Medical Center slid open at midnight.

A nurse took one look at my dress and called for a bed.

"Name?"

"Fairbank," I said. Then I thought of the portal and my stomach turned. "Cora Fairbank. Please don't put it on the screen."

"Ma'am, it's already on the screen. You've been in our system for years."

Of course I had.

They rolled me into a curtained bay, and a young doctor came in with an ultrasound cart.

She worked in silence and kept her face flat.

Eli stood at the foot of the bed with his coat dripping snowmelt on the floor.

He had not taken his eyes off the screen.

"There," the doctor said.

A small gray flutter, fast and steady, in the dark.

I started to cry and could not stop.

"The heartbeat is strong," she said. "You have a threatened miscarriage. You've had a fall, a shock and an injury to the lower back."

"Will I lose it?"

"I can't promise you that. Most women in your state keep the pregnancy."

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