CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 2 - THE WOMAN NEXT DOOR
Nora Ellis was seventy-one years old, five feet tall, and more terrifying than anyone in Blake's family had ever been.
I heard her voice through the door, calm but sharp.
"Megan, honey, I need you to stay awake. I already called them."
I tried to crawl toward the lock, but the pain pinned me to the floor.
"I can't open it," I choked out.
"Don't move," she said. "I have the spare."
Of course she did.
Three months earlier, I had given Nora a spare key after she watered my plants while Blake and I visited his parents for the weekend. Diane had mocked me for it.
"You trust strangers too easily," she had said.
But Nora was not a stranger.
Nora was the woman who brought soup when I had morning sickness. The woman who noticed when I stopped coming outside. The woman who once asked, very gently, "Does Blake always let his mother speak to you that way?"
I had laughed it off.
I had been embarrassed.
I had wanted to protect the marriage more than I wanted to protect myself.
The front door opened.
Nora stepped inside, took one look at me on the floor, and her face changed.
Not panic.
Fury.
"Oh, sweetheart," she said softly.
She knelt beside me and took my hand.
"Where is your husband?"
I could not answer at first.
Her eyes moved to the scattered papers.
To the hospital bag by the door.
To the car keys missing from the hook.
She understood before I said it.
"They left," I whispered.
Nora's jaw tightened.
"Who left?"
"Blake. His mother. His sister. His father."
Her hand closed around mine.
"Why?"
I stared at the ceiling, tears sliding into my hair.
"The mall."
For a moment, Nora went completely still.
Then she reached into her cardigan pocket, pulled out her phone, and spoke into it with a voice so steady it could have cut glass.
"This is Nora Ellis at 418 Maple Crest Drive. Pregnant woman in active labor with twins. High-risk. Husband abandoned her without transportation. Send paramedics now. And send police."
Police.
The word made my eyes open.
"No," I whispered. "I don't want trouble."
Nora looked down at me, and there was sadness in her expression.
"Megan, trouble already came into this house. We are just naming it."
The next fifteen minutes became fragments.
Nora placing a pillow under my head.
Her voice telling me to breathe.
Sirens growing louder.
The front door swinging open.
A female paramedic kneeling beside me, asking my name, how many weeks, how long the contractions had been happening.
"Thirty-eight weeks," I said. "Twins. High-risk."
"Where is your husband?" she asked.
Nora answered before I could.
"At the mall with his mother."
The paramedic's face flickered.
Just for a second.
Professional control, then anger underneath.
She checked my vitals, then looked at her partner.
"We need to move now."
Two police officers stepped inside as the paramedics lifted me carefully onto a stretcher. One of them, a tall man with tired eyes, picked up the blue folder from the floor.
His gaze stopped on the red-circled warning.
"Ma'am," he said gently, "did your husband see these instructions?"
I closed my eyes.
"Yes."
"Did he know you were in active labor when he left?"
I swallowed.
"Yes."
The officer's mouth tightened.
Nora stood behind him, arms folded, looking like the whole room had better start telling the truth.
The paramedics rolled me toward the door.
As we reached the porch, I saw Blake's SUV gone from the driveway.
The empty space looked ridiculous.
Small.
Ordinary.
A clean patch of concrete where a husband should have been.
At the hospital, everything moved fast.
Lights above me.
Nurses calling for monitors.
A doctor I had only met twice appearing at my side with his sleeves rolled up.
"Megan, I'm Dr. Calloway. Your babies are under stress, but you got here in time. Stay with us."
In time.
Those two words nearly destroyed me.
Because they meant there had been a line.
A real one.
A line between danger and disaster.
And Blake had walked away from it holding his mother's purse.
I asked for my phone.
A nurse placed it in my hand after checking that I was stable enough to speak.
There were no missed calls from Blake.
No texts.
Nothing.
Then, at 4:42 p.m., while doctors prepared me for an emergency delivery, my screen lit up.
Blake.
I stared at his name.
Nora, standing beside my bed now because she had followed the ambulance in her own car, saw it too.
"Do you want me to answer?" she asked.
I shook my head.
I pressed accept and put it on speaker.
Blake's voice came through, annoyed and breathless.
"Where the hell are you?"
For one second, nobody in the room moved.
Not the nurse.
Not Nora.
Not even me.
Then I looked at the ceiling and said, "The hospital."
There was a pause.
"What do you mean, the hospital?"
Behind him, Diane's voice snapped, "Ask her why the front door is open."
I closed my eyes.
Blake lowered his voice.
"Megan, I told you not to move."
That was when Dr. Calloway turned his head.
Nora's face went white with rage.
And something inside me finally stopped shaking.
"You left me on the floor," I said.
Blake went silent.
I heard shopping bags rustling.
Then Diane whispered, "Is she recording?"
May you like
I was not.
But the police officer standing just outside my room was.
