Call an Ambulance
Chapter 02 - Call an Ambulance
Adrian took the stairs three at a time, shirt still untucked from the night before, hair uncombed, the specific, confused urgency of a man yanked from sleep by his mother's scream arriving in every uncoordinated step.
He found Eleanor standing beside the bed, trembling, one hand pressed against her own mouth, the pregnancy test crumpled in her other fist.
Then he saw the sheets.
"Call an ambulance," Eleanor said, her voice carrying none of the authority she'd walked into this room with three minutes earlier. "Right now, Adrian. Call them right now."
Adrian was already dialing, his hands shaking so badly he missed the nine twice before the call connected, and he stood beside the bed talking to the dispatcher while Eleanor, operating on an instinct considerably older than her composure, retrieved a clean blanket from the hallway closet and laid it carefully over Lila's legs to keep her warm.
"She's bleeding," Adrian told the dispatcher, his voice cracking on the word. "A lot. She's barely conscious. She's pregnant, I think, there's a positive test on the nightstand."
The paramedics arrived in eleven minutes, which felt, to both Adrian and Eleanor, like approximately three hours.
Margaret, the family's housekeeper, met them at the front door and led them upstairs without a word, her own face pale and set, having spent the past ten minutes standing just outside the bedroom door, listening to Eleanor's quiet, desperate attempts to keep Lila responsive.
"Stay with me, sweetheart," Eleanor had been whispering, a word she had never once used for her daughter-in-law in the six months she'd known her, a word that arrived now without any conscious decision, simply the sound a frightened woman makes when the person in front of her is too young and too still.
The paramedics assessed Lila quickly, efficiently, their professional calm a sharp contrast to the specific chaos of two family members who had clearly been managing their own terror in this room for nearly fifteen minutes.
"We need to transport immediately," the lead paramedic said. "She's lost a considerable amount of blood. We'll stabilize her en route."
Adrian rode in the ambulance. Eleanor followed in her own car, driving badly, running two stop signs without noticing, the pregnancy test still clutched in her hand because she'd forgotten to set it down.
Margaret stayed behind in the empty house, standing in the doorway of the bridal bedroom, looking at the blood-soaked sheets on the bed where a young woman had spent her first night as a wife, and felt a specific, cold dread settle over her that had nothing to do with the medical emergency itself.
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She'd been the one to bring Lila her water glass the night before. She'd set it on the nightstand herself, filled from the kitchen tap, exactly as she'd done for every guest in this house for twenty-three years.
But she hadn't been the only person in the kitchen that evening.
