That might have been why I didn’t really hear the truck rush up behind us or hear the doors being thrown open or the voices crying our names. I didn’t really hear anything until someone’s arms wrapped around me and tried to pull me back. Then I fought. I didn’t want to be pulled away. I wanted to stay right there with him. I didn’t want to be separated from Jesse.
“Rowen?” a familiar voice cried behind me. “What are you doing here? Oh my God. Is he okay, Colt? Is my brother okay?”
I continued to fight against Colt’s strong grip, but he pulled me out of the truck and handed me off to Lily before crawling back into the truck, his cell phone to his ear. I struggled against Lily at first, but it didn’t last. My fight gave out a few squirms later, and all that was left were my tears. I dropped to my knees, and Lily fell to the ground beside me. She wasn’t crying though. Her face was white with shock, her eyes so wide they seemed to take up her whole face as she went from staring at her brother trapped inside the car to the front end of the truck buried against that giant tree.
“I need to report an emergency,” Colt said into the phone, his fingers pressed to Jesse’s neck.
Oh, God. He was checking for a pulse. Why hadn’t I thought of that? How had I known? Why had I run what had to be close to a mile when I wasn’t supposed to walk up a flight of stairs? Why were Lily and Colt here? What would happen?
So many questions spilled through my mind, piling up one upon the next. Then the one I wanted to hide from more than all of the others: was he alive?
I didn’t want to ask Colt what his fingers felt, pressed into the side of Jesse’s neck. I didn’t want the answer, because part of me knew that Jesse didn’t look like his eyes would ever open up again. Those eyes that could express so much with so little effort might never see the face of the child we’d made together. He might never feel what it was like to cradle a firstborn for the first time in his arms. He might never hear the first hiccup or coo or cry our baby would make.
As Colt talked to the operator, I wept. I wept for what might have been and what had been. For would could be and what might never be. I wept until my breaths turned into gasping sobs while beside me, Lily remained a pale statue. Colt was the only one with a semblance of calm.
Colt was still on the phone, giving what sounded like directions, when I crawled back toward the truck. Back toward my husband. I needed to be near him. Lily didn’t hold me back this time. All she could do was stare inside the cab of Old Bessie and shudder. My crawl came to an abrupt stop when something ripped down my stomach. I couldn’t help the howl that rushed out of my mouth. Wrapping my arms around my stomach, I rocked onto my side, totally bowled over from the pain. I lifted my hand to my face, sure I’d find it coated in blood again. My stomach felt as if it had been torn open.
There was no blood, but when the next jolt of pain came, I knew what was happening. I’d felt it weeks ago, though nothing to this degree. It was the whole reason I’d been put on bed rest. The whole reason I’d been confined to a bed for two months.
To keep my body from going back into labor.
Too late. They might have been able to stop it the first time, but something about this whole doomed day told me there’d be no stopping my labor a second time. The baby was coming.
When the third contraction hit me, I cried louder, but it was less due to the pain and more to the thought that the very day our baby would be born was the same day it lost its father and I lost my husband. A new love of my life was entering the world, and another was leaving it.
“Lily,” I panted, trying to sit up to get her attention. I could barely move. “Lily.” When I tried a third time, it came out as a scream thanks to the contraction tearing my body down the middle. “Lily!”
Her eyes cleared before they moved to me, spread out on the ground in front of her. They went wide again when she noticed the way I was breathing and holding my stomach.
“The baby,” I breathed. “It’s coming.”
Her eyes went wider for one second, then a look of resolution fell over her face before she scooted toward me and placed my head gently in her lap. “Colt!”
He stopped mid-word.
“Tell them to send another ambulance.” When his brows pinched together, Lily sucked in a deep breath. “Rowen’s in labor.”
THE AMBULANCE TOOK me first. It took me instead of him.
The second one had arrived as they were loading me, so it wasn’t like more than a few minutes had passed since the time the first one arrived, but they’d taken me first. Why? Was it a simple case of there being two lives endangered with me—mine and the baby’s—or did something else go into the prioritization of rescue victims? Something having to do with who they could save versus who was past the point of saving?
Lily leapt into the ambulance with me, leaving Colt with Jesse. She kept shushing me and running her fingers through my hair as I fired off questions, demanding the medics tell me why they’d picked me and not my husband. No one gave me an answer, so I was left with my guesses.
I hated leaving Jesse like that. I hated being unable to do anything about it too. When he needed me most, I’d left him. Colt stayed and promised me he’d ride in the ambulance with him and call the Walkers, but I didn’t miss the way Colt couldn’t seem to look me in the eyes when he talked to me. I didn’t miss the streaks on his shirt, painted red with the blood of my husband.
The drive to the hospital was surprisingly fast. I supposed that was what a set of blaring sirens and trained drivers would do, but once I was rolled through the emergency room doors, I went one-track minded. The quickening contractions were the only thing that could distract me from firing off question after question to whatever hospital employee was close enough to hear me. I wanted to know if Jesse had arrived yet. If so, where had he been sent? Could we be placed in rooms next to each other? Could they please go and check on his status? Could they let him know our baby was about to be born and I really wanted to wait until he was awake and nearby to witness it?