They moved with frantic, coordinated violence. I was rolled onto a rigid board, strapped down tight, and hoisted into the air. The transition from the quiet, bloody floor of my home to the chaotic, blindingly bright interior of the ambulance was jarring.
Doors slammed. The siren screamed to life, a frantic heartbeat echoing the terror in my own chest.
“Where… my baby?” I managed to choke out, staring blankly at the metal ceiling of the ambulance as it swayed violently around a corner.
The paramedic holding a pressure bag of IV fluids looked down at me, his face grim, his uniform stained with my blood. “We’re going to get you to the hospital, Madison. We’re doing everything we can. Just hold on.”
The next twenty minutes were a terrifying blur of medical jargon, flashing lights, and the squeak of rubber wheels on hospital linoleum. I remember the frantic shouting of trauma nurses in the ER bay. I remember the freezing swipe of iodine across my swollen stomach.
I remember a doctor yelling, “Fetal heart rate is in the sixties and dropping! We have a complete abruption. We need her in the OR for a crash C-section right now! Put her under!”
A plastic mask was clamped hard over my nose and mouth. A nurse leaned close, her eyes wide with urgency. “Count backward from ten, sweetie.”
“Ten…” I whispered. “Nine…”
Then, the world dissolved into absolute, silent, terrifying blackness. I didn’t know if I would ever wake up. And I didn’t know if my baby would be alive if I did.
I did not wake up gracefully. I dragged my consciousness up from a deep, chemical trench, fighting through a suffocating fog of anesthesia.
There was no pain, only a heavy, terrifying numbness from my chest down. The rhythmic, hollow beep… beep… beep of a heart monitor was the only sound in the sterile room. I blinked against the harsh fluorescent lights, trying to orient myself. The walls were painted a sickly, pale institutional green. Tubes snaked out of my arms, and a heavy oxygen cannula sat under my nose.
Instinctively, desperately, I moved my right hand down to my stomach.
It was flat. Covered in thick, tight surgical binders.
The breath caught in my throat. The panic was instantaneous and absolute. “My baby,” I rasped, the sound tearing at my dry, intubated vocal cords. “Where is she? Where is my baby?”
A shadow moved rapidly beside my bed. It wasn’t Ethan.
It was my older sister, Claire.