Chapter 2 - The Red Floor
The Prentice Pavilion at Northwestern Memorial smelled of surgical scrub, warm blankets from the autoclave, and the faint, ozone-heavy hum of three ultrasound monitors running on standby.
When the automatic sliding doors parted, four people in teal scrubs moved toward the vehicle before the Defender’s tires had completely ceased their rotation against the concrete bay floor.
"Trauma transfer, female, thirty-two weeks," Theo barked through the lowered window, hitting the door release.
Two pairs of hands slid under my shoulders. A transfer board—cold, yellow plastic—was wedged beneath my lower back with a swift, practiced shove. The ceiling of the ambulance bay vanished, replaced by the dizzying, rhythmic flash of rectangular fluorescent panels passing overhead at high speed.
"Fetal heart tones, now!" a woman’s voice cut through the administrative noise.
It was Dr. Keller. She was fifty-five, with iron-gray hair cropped short beneath a surgical cap patterned with tiny yellow lemons. She didn't look at my face; her hands went directly to my abdomen, her fingers palpating the uterine fundus with an aggressive, diagnostic certainty that made me cry out.
A cold splash of acoustic gel hit my bare stomach.
The doppler wand pressed down, sweeping from the navel down toward the pelvic brim. For five agonizing seconds, the only sound in the bay was the loud, staticky hiss of the speaker—a dead, ocean-like rushing that sounded like an empty radio channel.
"Come on, Claire," I sobbed, my fingernails digging into the vinyl edges of the gurney mattress until the leather squeaked. "Come on, please. Please."
Whump... whump... whump-whump-whump.
The sound burst from the monitor speaker, thin and frantic, like the wings of a small bird trapped in an attic rafters.
"One-oh-eight," the technician called out, her face grim. "Tachycardic initially, now dipping. Decels present. Variable."
"Abruptio placentae," Dr. Keller said without hesitation. She looked over the top of her surgical mask toward the charge nurse. "The placenta is peeling off the posterior wall. She’s bleeding behind the membrane. We have maybe fifteen minutes before the baby’s perfusion drops below seventy percent. Call OR four. Tell anesthesia we're doing a rapid-sequence crash section. Blood bank, two units of O-neg on the warmer now."
"Wait," I gasped, reaching blindly for Theo. "Theo—"
He was there. He had already slipped into paper booties and a sterile disposable gown, his formal white tuxedo shirt smeared with my blood across the left breast pocket. He caught my hand, his thumb pressing hard into the space between my knuckles.
"I’m right behind the glass, Naomi," he said. He leaned down until his forehead touched mine. His breath was warm, smelling of peppermint and the cold lake wind. "You do not fight the mask. You let them give you the gas. When you wake up, I will be holding her. Do you hear me? I will be holding her."
"Theo, don't let them take her," I cried, the tears finally breaking through, flooding the corners of my eyes and dripping into my ears.
"Nobody takes what belongs to me," he said.
The heavy double doors of OR Four swung open with a dull pneumatic hiss.
The lights inside were round, blinding, and sterile, like five miniature suns suspended from articulating steel arms. Someone pulled the sage-green dress upward, cutting the silk with heavy trauma shears—snip, snip, snip—the ruined fabric falling onto the floorboards like wet leaves. A plastic mask, smelling sweet and chemical, descended over my nose and mouth.
"Count backward from ten, Naomi," the anesthesiologist whispered, her hand pressing gently against the side of my neck.
"Ten," I whispered.
Through the square observation window above the scrubbing sink, I saw Theo.
He had his laptop open on the stainless-steel prep counter. He wasn't crying. He wasn't praying. His fingers were flying across the keyboard with the furious, calculated speed of an artillery officer programming coordinates. Even through the fog of the propofol creeping into my veins like liquid frost, I recognized the red-and-white header on his screen: First National Trust — Asset Verification Portal.
"Nine," I breathed.
May you like
The room tilted sixty degrees to the left. The sound of the heart monitor—whump... whump...—stretched out, deeper and slower, until it merged with the heavy, rhythmic throb of the ventilation exhaust.
Then came the darkness, black and absolute as the bottom of the lake.
