PART 2
The next thing I remembered was light.
Not the hard fluorescent light of the bus, but something softer, dimmed above a hospital bed.
For several seconds, I didn’t know where I was.
Then I felt the weight of my stomach.
My hands moved there immediately.
“Babies?”
A woman in navy scrubs appeared beside me.
“Still exactly where we want them.”
I closed my eyes.
The relief hurt almost as much as the fear had.
“My name is Dr. Leila Shah,” she said. “You’re at St. Catherine’s Medical Center. The ambulance brought you in just before midnight.”
I turned my head toward the windows.
Rain blurred the glass.
“How long?”
“About three hours.”
Three hours.
Ethan could already be somewhere over the country.
I had lost track of whether that mattered.
“What happened?”
“Your membranes ruptured around Baby A, and you were having regular contractions. We’ve managed to calmthose contractions for now.”
“For now?”
Dr. Shah pulled a chair closer.
She didn’t pretend certainty where there wasn’t any, and something about that made me trust her.
“With a triplet pregnancy at twenty-eight weeks, we’re careful about promises. Right now, all three babies have strong heart rates. You’re stable. We’re giving you medication to help protect them in case delivery becomes necessary, antibiotics because of the ruptured membrane, and we’ll monitor you very closely.”
“Could they stay inside longer?”
“That’s what we’re hoping.”
I gripped the blanket.
“How much longer?”
“Every safe day matters.”
That sentence became the first thing I understood about my new life.
Not months.
Not years.
Days.
Sometimes hours.
You stopped asking the future to guarantee itself.
You took the safe day it gave you.
There was a knock on the half-open door.
A woman in her late thirties stepped inside carrying a folder anda paper cup.
“I’m Maya Ortiz. Hospital social worker.”
My stomach tightened.
“Is this about payment?”
Dr. Shah gave Maya a glance I couldn’t interpret.
Maya sat beside the bed.
“It’s about making sure you have what you need.”
“I don’t have insurance.”
“You actually do at the moment.”
I frowned.
“My husband’s company canceled it.”
“They attempted to remove you from the employee family plan yesterday afternoon. The termination hasn’t processed because your eligibility status requires review.”
Of course it did.
Even being abandoned involved paperwork.
“I can’t pay for this.”
“We’re going to deal with one thing at a time.”
