Part 2
Through the windshield she saw them beneath the porch light.
Richard stood at the front, his hands now hanging open at his sides. Margaret remained half a step behind him, composed except for the tight line of her mouth. Evan stood apart from both, staring toward the car. Leila was no longer visible.
The dispatcher answered.
Claire activated the speakerphone and placed the phone against her thigh.
“I’m pregnant,” she said. She swallowed, listening for anything inside herself. “I was hit.”
The dispatcher’s voice sharpened without becoming louder. She asked for the address, how many months pregnant Claire was, whether the person who hit her had a weapon, whether she was bleeding, whether she could leave safely.
Claire gave the lodge address. She said thirty-two weeks. She said no weapon, then looked toward the kitchen window and remembered the skillet on the granite.
“I had a pan,” she said. “I picked it up because he came toward me. I put it down. I’m locked in my car.”
“Who struck you?”
“My fiancé’s father.”
The word fiancé seemed absurd now. Her silver engagement ring caught the light from the dashboard, a clean white flash across her clenched hand.
The baby moved.
It was not a kick. More like a slow turn, faint and deep.
Claire bent over the steering wheel and made a sound she did not recognize.
“Ma’am?”
“She moved,” Claire said. “The baby moved.”
“That’s good. I want you to stay where you are. Help is on the way.”
Under the porch light, Richard turned to Evan and began speaking. Even through the glass Claire could tell he was explaining. He pointed once toward the lodge, once toward the car. Margaret placed a hand on his forearm, not to comfort him but to make him lower it.
Evan looked at Claire.
He took one step off the porch.
Richard caught his shoulder.
The first patrol vehicle arrived without a siren, blue lights washing silently over the stone façade. An ambulance followed, then another patrol car. The parking lot filled with abrupt movement: doors opening, radios crackling, boots striking pavement. Richard straightened as if guests had arrived unexpectedly.
A female officer approached Claire’s driver-side window and crouched where Claire could see her hands. Her nameplate read HART.
“Claire? I’m Officer Hart. Can you unlock the door for me?”
Claire looked toward the porch. Another officer was separating Richard from Margaret and Evan. Richard’s jaw moved continuously. Margaret folded her arms. Evan had both hands on top of his head.
Claire unlocked the door.
Officer Hart opened it slowly. “Paramedics are right here. Are you able to step out?”
“I think so.”
The moment Claire put one foot on the pavement, her legs shook. A paramedic brought the stretcher closer, but she resisted sitting.
“My phone.”
“I’ve got it,” Officer Hart said.
“My purse is inside.”
“We’ll deal with that.”
“My insurance was canceled.”
The officer’s expression changed, not because she understood but because she recognized that Claire was trying to say something she believed mattered.
“Let’s get you checked first.”
Claire looked past her. Richard was speaking to the second officer now, his hands cutting careful shapes in the air. Margaret stood beside him with her head slightly tilted, listening as though evaluating a contractor’s estimate. Evan was still apart. He kept looking toward Claire and then away.
When the paramedic guided her onto the stretcher, Richard raised his voice for the first time.
“She came at me with a skillet.”
Officer Hart turned.
Claire stared at him.
Richard pointed toward the kitchen. “Ask any of them. She was waving it around. She’s been unstable for weeks.”
Margaret said nothing.
Evan’s mouth opened.
No sound came.
Officer Hart stepped between the stretcher and the porch. “Sir, keep your hands where I can see them.”
“I’m explaining what happened.”
“You’ll have an opportunity to give a statement.”
“I am giving one.”
The officer near Richard asked him to turn around.
Richard laughed once, sharply. “You cannot be serious.”
The laugh stayed in Claire’s mind as the paramedics lifted the stretcher. It was not frightened or ashamed. It was the sound he made when an employee told him something was impossible.
Inside the ambulance, one paramedic cut away the side seam of Claire’s blouse to examine the swelling. She protested weakly—the blouse had cost too much, and she had bought it because it was one of the few things that still fit without making her feel disguised as a tent.
“We’ll replace it,” the paramedic said.
Claire nearly laughed. Instead she watched the open ambulance doors.
Officer Hart was photographing the porch and speaking into her radio. The second officer had Richard’s hands behind his back. Margaret stood rigidly beneath the light. Evan had moved down one step, but no farther.
The doors closed.
The fetal monitor in the emergency department produced a rapid, galloping rhythm that made Claire cry harder than the pain had. She turned her face toward the wall so the nurse would not see, although the nurse was the one who handed her tissues.
“Heart rate looks reassuring,” Dr. Patel said. “That’s not the same as saying we’re done. With blunt trauma this late in pregnancy, we monitor for several hours. Longer if anything changes.”
“Can it change later?”
“It can. That’s why you’re here.”
“Is she hurt?”
“We don’t see signs of immediate distress.”
“Is that what you tell people when you don’t know?”
Dr. Patel did not flinch. She was small, with green-framed glasses and a faded mark above one eyebrow where a mask had rubbed her skin.
“It’s what I tell people when the honest answer is that we need time.”
May you like
Claire nodded. She appreciated the answer and resented it.
A bruise spread beneath the torn blouse, red at the center and blue around the edges. Every time the baby shifted, relief passed through Claire so forcefully it made her nauseated. The nurse helped her into a hospital gown and placed the ruined blouse in a clear plastic bag.
