Chapter 12: The Parking Lot

The third contraction folded me over beside Ben's car in the courthouse parking lot.

I gripped the roof with both hands and breathed through my teeth.

"Hannah, look at me. How far apart?"

"I don't know. Four minutes. Five."

"You're thirty-three weeks."

"I know how many weeks I am."

"I'm calling an ambulance."

"Ben."

"I'm calling it," he said, and he already had the phone at his ear.

He gave the address and my name and the number of weeks in one flat breath.

Then he put his arm around my back and held me up while the pain went through me again.

I was breathing hard when I looked up.

Colleen stood twenty feet away beside a silver sedan, with her keys in her hand.

She had come out of the building behind us.

She was watching me, and checking who else was looking.

A man with a briefcase had stopped on the sidewalk.

Two women from the clerk's office were standing at the courthouse door.

Colleen came toward me quickly with her face full of concern.

"Hannah! Oh my God. I'm a nurse. Let me help, sit her down, she shouldn't be standing."

"Don't touch her," Ben said.

"I'm only trying to..."

"Step back."

She stopped four feet from us, and her hand went to her throat.

"Hannah, honey, I know you hate me. But you could lose that baby. Please, let me stay with you until the ambulance comes. I won't say a word."

"You can stay right where you are," I said.

My voice shook.

I made it stronger anyway, because the man with the briefcase was listening.

Keep reading free with an account. Start On Halloween, My Husband Chose Her Family Over Ours from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.