Chapter 5 - The Hospital Rush
“Sarah, look at me. Breathe.”
Preston’s voice was the only anchor holding me to reality. The chaotic noise of the backyard—my mother’s hysterical crying, my father shouting at Kyle and Marissa to leave, the crunch of gravel as truck tires spun out in the driveway—all dissolved into a distant, muffled hum.
A warm, wet sensation spread down my legs.
I looked down, and the world stopped spinning. A dark crimson stain was spreading across the light fabric of my linen dress.
“Preston,” I choked out, my fingers digging into his forearm with terrifying strength. “The baby. Something’s wrong.”
The professional calmness that had carried Preston through high-stakes federal trials shattered instantly. For the first time since I had known him, I saw absolute, unadulterated panic in his eyes. He didn’t hesitate for a fraction of a second. Scooping me up into his arms as if I weighed nothing at all, he sprinted toward our car parked in the driveway.
“Helen!” Preston shouted back toward my mother, who was collapsed in a lawn chair weeping uncontrollably. “We’re going to Swedish Medical Center! Call us when you get there!”
He laid me carefully across the back seat of our sedan, propping my head up with his rolled-up suit jacket. He climbed into the driver’s seat, tires screaming against the gravel as he slammed the accelerator down, tearing away from the house without looking back.
During the agonizing drive to the hospital, Preston drove with a terrifying, calculated precision. He weaved through weekend traffic on Santa Fe Drive, honking his horn and flashing his emergency lights, his eyes constantly darting to the rearview mirror to check on me.
“Stay with me, sweetheart,” he kept repeating, his voice thick with emotion. “Just keep breathing. We’re almost there. Five minutes. Just five minutes.”
I closed my eyes, the pain in my abdomen growing sharper, radiating into my lower back. In the darkness behind my eyelids, I kept seeing Marissa’s face—distorted by hatred, shouting those horrific words: I hope you lose the baby.
Had her shove caused internal damage? Had the trauma triggered premature labor at only twenty-four weeks?
At twenty-four weeks, a baby’s chances of survival outside the womb were terrifyingly slim—barely hanging by a thread in a neonatal intensive care unit, facing months of ventilators, brain bleeds, and endless uncertainty.
When we reached the emergency entrance of Swedish Medical Center, Preston threw the car into park, jumped out, and flung the back door open.
“Help!” he screamed at the sliding glass doors. “Pregnant woman! Severe abdominal trauma and bleeding! I need a trauma team and an OB/GYN stat!”
Within seconds, a team of nurses and a resident physician rushed out with a gurney. They transferred me with practiced gentleness, wheeling me through the automatic doors into the bright, sterile chaos of the emergency department.
Preston stayed right by my side, gripping my hand so tightly his knuckles turned white.
“Sir, you’ll have to wait in the family consultation room once we get her inside,” the triage nurse said gently, guiding us through the swinging double doors.
May you like
Preston stopped dead in his tracks, looking the nurse dead in the eye with a gaze that brooked no argument. “I am her husband. I am a federal judge. I am not leaving her side unless she tells me to.”
The nurse took one look at his face and nodded immediately. “Right this way.”
