The radio on the paramedic’s shoulder cracked once, sharp and dry, and the sound cut through the bedroom harder than any shouting could have.
Lucy’s fingers slipped from mine when they lifted the stretcher. Her skin felt cold and damp, and my coat hung around her shoulders like it belonged to someone much larger. The cracked phone lay faceup on the floor, still glowing beside the blood pressure cuff, my mother’s name bright enough to make the whole room feel lit by accusation.
The paramedic looked at me again.
“Bring that phone,” he said.
Not asked.
Told.
I picked it up with two fingers, like it had been pulled from dirty water.
In the ambulance, Lucy kept blinking at the ceiling. The lights flashed red across her face, then white, then red again. The air smelled like rubber gloves, cold metal, and the sour coffee in my own breath. Every bump in the road made her mouth tighten. Every time the monitor beeped, the paramedic looked down faster.
I sat on the bench, knees jammed against the cabinet, Lucy’s cracked phone in my hand and my own phone lighting up at last with missed calls I had not earned the right to miss.
At 1:31 a.m., my mother called me.
The screen showed Mom.
The paramedic saw it.
“Answer on speaker,” he said.
My thumb hovered.
Lucy’s eyes moved toward me. Not begging. Not angry. Just tired enough that I could see the tiny red lines around the whites of her eyes.
I answered.
Before I said a word, my mother’s voice came through clean and calm.
“Adrian, do not let them turn this into some dramatic hospital scene. Lucy gets attention when you’re gone, and you know it.”
The paramedic’s jaw shifted.
I stared at the silver latch on the ambulance cabinet until it blurred.
My mother kept going.
“I already told her. If she goes in making claims, I’ll explain that she’s been unstable all week.”
Lucy closed her eyes.
The paramedic reached for the phone.
“Ma’am,” he said, “this is Chicago Fire Department. This call is being documented.”
Silence.
Then my mother laughed once, softly.
“Well, then document that my daughter-in-law is hysterical.”
The paramedic ended the call without asking me.
At Northwestern Memorial, the sliding doors opened into cold fluorescent light and the smell of antiseptic. Wheels rattled over the floor. A nurse with a blue badge moved beside Lucy and asked questions in a voice that did not waste air.
“How many weeks?”
“Thirty-five,” I said.
“Headache? Vision changes? Upper right pain?”
Lucy tried to answer. Her lips moved, but only one word came out.
“Pressure.”
The nurse looked at the blood pressure number the paramedic read from his chart.
Her face changed by half an inch.
Not panic.
Procedure.
That was worse.
They took Lucy through a set of double doors. I followed until a nurse put one hand up, palm flat against my chest.
“Sir, wait here.”
“I’m her husband.”
“I know. Wait here.”
