For a second, I thought the pain was making me hallucinate. But it rang again, sharp and insistent, followed by a rapid, heavy knocking against the wood.
“Hello? Hey, is anyone home?”
The voice was muffled through the wood, but it was unmistakably familiar. It was Lauren Mitchell. She had been my college roommate, a fiercely loyal force of nature whom I hadn’t seen in nearly two years. As Travis’s grip on my life had tightened, he had subtly, expertly isolated me from anyone who might question his authority. Lauren and I had drifted apart, pushed into different orbits by my husband’s constant, quiet sabotage of my friendships.
“Lauren!” I screamed, my voice tearing at my throat. “Lauren, help me! Please!”
The heavy brass handle turned. Thank God in heaven, Travis had been in such a rush to appease his mother that he hadn’t fully engaged the lock. Lauren burst into the foyer, a brightly colored envelope in her hand. Her casual smile vanished the second her eyes locked onto my contorted body.
“Oh my God,” she gasped, dropping the envelope and sprinting to my side. “You’re in labor! Where is Travis? Where is his family?”
“Gone,” I choked out, gripping her wrist with bruising force as another contraction ripped through me. “They went shopping. Please, Lauren. Something’s wrong with the babies. We have to go.”
Lauren didn’t hesitate. She didn’t waste precious seconds asking for details or expressing her outrage. She pulled her phone from her pocket, dialed 911, and put it on speaker, simultaneously wrapping her strong arm around my waist to haul me upright.
Her car was parked crookedly in my driveway, the engine still humming. She would tell me later that she had only intended to quickly drop off a wedding invitation and be on her way. It was a sheer, terrifying coincidence—a sliver of divine intervention in a day characterized by human cruelty.
The drive to Mercy General Hospital was a chaotic blur of blinding pain and blinding speed. Lauren drove like a woman possessed, her hand permanently resting on the horn as she blew through two red lights and swerved around stalled traffic. In the passenger seat, I was losing my grip on reality. The pain was no longer localized; it was my entire universe.
“Stay with me, stay with me, look at me,” Lauren kept repeating, her right hand gripping mine so tightly my fingers went numb. “We’re three minutes away. Breathe. Just look at the dashboard. You’re doing great.”
We skidded into the emergency drop-off zone. Before the car was even fully in park, Lauren was out the door, screaming for assistance. Within seconds, a triage team descended upon us. Strong hands lifted me from the passenger seat into a waiting wheelchair. The fluorescent lights of the hospital corridors strobed overhead as they ran me straight through the swinging double doors of the maternity ward.
“Patient is thirty-eight weeks, pregnant with twins, water has broken, extreme abdominal rigidity,” a nurse rattled off to a doctor jogging alongside my chair.
Within minutes, my clothes were cut away, a hospital gown was slipped over me, and thick, cold gel was applied to my stomach. Two separate fetal monitors were strapped to my abdomen.
The lead nurse stared at the digital readout. The color drained completely from her face.
“The babies are in severe distress,” she announced, her voice tight and grim. FULL STORY >>
