Panic, cold and absolute, instantly seized my chest. The memories of the living room, the impact, the blood, crashed back into my brain with terrifying clarity. I tried to sit up, but the agonizing fire in my incision forced me back down with a groan.
“The baby?” I choked out, the words barely audible. “Aaron, where is the baby?”
Aaron lifted his head. Tears were streaming freely down his face, cutting tracks through the dust on his cheeks. He kissed my hand repeatedly, his lips trembling.
“She’s alive, Emily,” Aaron whispered, his voice cracking with profound, overwhelming relief. “She’s alive. Thirty-one weeks. They delivered her via emergency C-section the second the ambulance got you here.”
I closed my eyes, a single, massive tear escaping and rolling into my hair.
“She’s in the NICU,” Aaron continued, his voice dropping into a low, serious register that I rarely heard from him. He gently stroked my hair. “It was a severe placental abruption, Emily. The doctor said the trauma caused the placenta to tear completely away from the uterine wall. You lost an incredible amount of blood. You almost…” He swallowed hard, unable to finish the sentence. “You almost died on that floor.”
Before I could fully process the terrifying magnitude of how close I had come to losing everything, the heavy wooden door of my hospital room clicked open.
