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“Five minutes,” I call after her. “And then I’m leaving with or without you.”
The door closes behind her. I grip the steering wheel tighter, jaw locked, and stare straight ahead. The clock on the dash ticks forward. I can already feel the weight of the day pressing down—Thanksgiving dinner waiting, Blaire covering for me with her family, Theo asking where I am. I check the time again.
Four minutes and thirty seconds left.
***
The ER is a fluorescent, half-chaotic blur of coughing patients, crying toddlers, and old sitcom reruns blaring too loud from a mounted TV. The air smells like antiseptic and stale coffee.
Veronica storms up to the triage desk, her voice high and sharp. “We need to get up to Obstetrics. I’m having spotting.”
The nurse doesn’t even look up from her keyboard. “How far along?”
“Eight weeks, three days.”
“Okay,” the nurse says, typing. “We’ll get you a room down here as soon as we have one available.”
Veronica stiffens. “Down here? No. This is serious.”
The nurse offers a practiced, polite smile—the kind that’s clearly been honed on a thousand similar performances. “For pregnancies under fourteen weeks, we handle everything in the ER unless there’s a major complication. If there’s a real concern, we’ll let you know.”
“But this could be an emergency!” Veronica sputters.
“If it becomes one, sweetheart, you’ll be the first to know.” The nurse nods toward a row of hard plastic chairs. “Have a seat. We’ll call you when we’re ready.”
Veronica wheels on me like I personally cursed her uterus as I guide her toward the waiting area.
“Do you see this?” she hisses. “They’re not taking it seriously.”
“They’re acting like it’s not an emergency,” I say, dropping into a chair and settling in for what’s clearly going to be a long afternoon. “Isn’t that supposed to be good news?”
“It means they don’t care!”
“No,” I correct, “it means they don’t think you’re having an emergency.”
She flops into the seat beside me with a scowl, arms crossed so tightly over her stomach I’m surprised she can still breathe. I lean my head back against the wall, watching people filter in and out, trying to unclench my jaw. When Blaire was ten weeks along, I was halfway across the world. Even after I came home, I didn’t truly understand the fear until that night at sixteen weeks—the call from her dad, the hospital lights, the way my chest had cracked open at the thought of losing my kid. That fear still lives somewhere in my bones.
So I stay. Because part of me still thinks: What if? What if this really is my kid?
Fifteen minutes in, the nurses’ calm, unhurried pace tells me everything I need to know. Thirty minutes in, Veronica suddenly starts acting like she’s in agony. Whenever a nurse passes, she puts a hand on her stomach and whimpers dramatically. She keeps trying to lean on me, and I know to anyone watching I probably look like a piece of shit who can’t be bothered with his pregnant girlfriend. I can’t bring myself to play pretend for the sake of appearances.
I mostly just text Blaire, angling the phone so Veronica can’t see the screen.
Blaire Thomas
At my parents. Told them you had a family thing to handle.
Don’t call this bullshit a family thing.
Well, “he’s with his other baby mama” didn’t sound like the right thing to say.
Don’t fucking call her that either.
She doesn't respond for a while after that. Presumably enjoying Thanksgiving with her family like I'm suppose to be doing instead of sitting in this shitty waiting room for what is nothing more than another ploy for my attention.
Blaire Thomas
Any updates?
