Chapter 3 - The Birthday That Mattered More
Vance returned my call four hours later.
I was already inside a maternity suite.
A nurse held the phone near my ear because my hands would not stop shaking.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“The hospital.”
“You actually called an ambulance?”
My contraction tightened.
The nurse’s expression hardened.
“Yes.”
“You know what that’s going to cost?”
I laughed once through the pain.
It sounded almost like a sob.
“Our baby is coming.”
“She wasn’t due for another week.”
“Babies don’t read calendars.”
In the background, his mother spoke loudly enough for me to hear.
“Tell her we’ll come in the morning.”
Eleanor Holloway had never forgiven me for becoming pregnant before she finished planning the next phase of Vance’s career.
She believed family events should occur according to her calendar.
Weddings.
Promotions.
Children.
Grief.
Everything was acceptable if it did not inconvenience her.
Vance lowered his voice.
“Mom has guests. We can’t just leave in the middle of dinner.”
“I may need an emergency delivery.”
“You’re always imagining the worst.”
The nurse took the phone from me.
“Mr. Holloway, your wife is in active labor and experiencing abnormal fetal heart-rate changes. You need to come now.”
Silence.
Then Vance said:
“She does this. She makes things dramatic.”
The nurse ended the call.
“You don’t need him in this room,” she said.
At that moment, the door opened.
A tall man with silver hair entered wearing a rain-darkened overcoat.
Graham looked at me.
Then at the monitor.
May you like
“I’m here.”
Those two words steadied me more than anything Vance had said in nine months.
