Page 166 of Mile High Ex's Dad
Not panic. Not relief.
Something clinical and urgent.
“What?” Sienna asks again. “Please stop doing that with your faces. Somebody tell me.”
The doctor looks at her, then at me, then back to the screen. “There’s partial placental abruption,” she says. “Not complete. But enough to explain the bleeding.”
Sienna stares.
I know the words individually. Together, they land like a blow.
The doctor goes on. “The baby still has a heartbeat. That’s good. But I don’t want to wait.”
“Wait for what?” Sienna asks.
The doctor meets her eyes. “You’re in labor, and with this amount of bleeding I don’t think it’s safe to try to hold it off.”
Silence.
Then Sienna says, very quietly, “I’m having the baby now?”
The doctor nods once. “Most likely, yes.”
Sienna turns her head toward me so slowly it hurts to watch.
I don’t know what my face looks like to her. I only know that my chest feels carved open and filled with ice.
“This is too early,” she whispers.
The doctor says, “It’s early, but not impossible. Right now the priority is getting both of you through it safely.”
The technician wipes away the gel and steps back.
For a second, no one moves. The monitor is still on. The room still feels crowded with machines and breath and too much fear.
Then the doctor turns to Sienna and says, in the same calm voice she has used for everything so far, “We need to move quickly.”
Sienna blinks at her. “Move where?”
“To labor and delivery,” the doctor says. “And possibly surgery if this worsens.”
A nurse is already reaching for a clipboard. Another is adjusting the bed. The whole room has shifted again, becoming more practical, more urgent.
The doctor looks down at the form and asks, “Where is your husband?”
Sienna’s face tightens. “I don’t have one,” she says.
The doctor nods once, not interested in embarrassment, only information. “All right. Who is the father?”
Sienna turns her head slightly, as if to answer.
I speak before she can.
“I am.”
The words come out flat and certain.
The room goes quiet for half a second. Sienna looks at me, her mouth falling open slightly. The doctor glances between us once, then accepts it immediately because she has no time for emotional complications and even less interest in them.
