I answer automatically, my brain floating somewhere outside my body.
The ambulance ride is a blur of beeping monitors and reassuring voices and pain that comes and goes in waves. I keep my hand on my belly, feeling the babies move.
They're okay. They have to be okay.
Mel is waiting when we arrive at the ER. She wheels alongside the gurney, her hand finding mine.
"I'm here," she says. "You're okay. All three of you."
Everything is beeps and shouts until I’m hooked up to monitors and wires, and finally, mercifully, I hear the melody of heartbeats.
Two steady rhythms that make me cry with relief.
They're alive.
Mel sits in the chair beside my bed, her hand holding mine, and I sob. I didn’t realize how afraid I was until I saw that all is well.
Although I do hear Dr. Patel muttering something about tests.
"Have you called Tucker?" Mel asks carefully.
Her question confuses me. “No."
"Sloane—"
“He’s on the ice,” I tell her, gripping the bed rail, staring at the jagged lines tracking each baby’s vitals.
Mel recoils. “Sloane. Come on.”
I shake my head. “He’s in the middle of a professional hockey game, Mel. He can’t get here even if he wanted to. I need to get used to this, being the dependable parent. Being present.”
Mel opens her mouth, then closes it. Then says, “Sloane, he’s not playing anyway. He’s benched.”
I whip my head toward her. “What do you mean benched?” The worry fades away for a moment, replaced by icy dread.
“He didn’t tell you?” Her eyes dance in the bright lights, and I try to focus on her face, on what she’s saying. “He spaced out or something, and a teammate got hit on Tucker’s watch. I’m working on his case with the player’s association…to get more emergency family leave.”
I swallow down bile as I realize Tucker has been lying to me.Keeping me in the dark while he somehow thinks he’s protecting me.
A doctor comes in and snaps me back to the crisis at hand—not Dr. Patel, someone younger. She introduces herself as Dr. Kim, checks the monitors, examines me with careful hands.
"Your blood pressure is elevated," she says. "Combined with the bleeding and cramping, we're concerned about preeclampsia. We need to keep you here for observation."
"For how long?"
"At least overnight. Possibly longer, depending on how things progress." She makes notes on her tablet. "Is there someone we should call? The father?"
"No." The word comes out too fast, too sharp. "There's no one."
Dr. Kim and Mel exchange a look.
"Sloane," Mel says quietly. "Maybe we should?—"
"No," I repeat. "I'm making my own damn decisions for once."
Mel falls silent. Dr. Kim finishes her notes and leaves, explaining that the staff will move me to a room upstairs.
I'm alone with Mel and the steady beep of monitors and the sound of my babies' heartbeats.
