I’m eight months pregnant. My husband’s family’s party ended hours ago, but the table is still piled high with greasy plates and bowls of food. My husband, Daniel, went upstairs while his mother watched me wash them.
“Daniel!” I called. “My water has broken. I need to go to the hospital.”
He came downstairs with his mother. I showed them the puddle spreading around my shoes. Another stream of water soaked my pants.
His mother, Elaine, folded her arms. “Wait until tomorrow morning. Don’t exaggerate.”
“My due date isn’t here yet,” I said. “Please get the car for me.”
Daniel stared down at the floor. “Mom said the first stage of labor can last for hours.”
“I’ll call the hospital.”
I reached for my phone, but it wasn’t on the counter where I’d left it. Elaine said she’d moved it into the living room to avoid getting wet. She had no intention of bringing it back.
A sharp pain shot through my lower abdomen. I gripped the sink until the pain subsided. Then, I walked toward the living room, one hand against the wall.
“You need to lie down,” Daniel said, stepping into the doorway.
“Move.”
His sister, Tess, appeared at the end of the hallway. She was seventeen and had stayed behind to help clean up. Her gaze shifted from my soaking wet clothes to the towel Elaine had dropped into the puddle.
“Have you called 911 yet?” Tess asked.
“She doesn’t need an ambulance,” Elaine snapped.
Tess took out her phone. Daniel took a step toward her. I’d never seen him move so fast all night.
“Give it to me,” he said.
Tess stepped back and tapped the screen. “My sister-in-law is pregnant. Her water broke, and nobody will take her to the hospital.”
Elaine quickly grabbed the phone. Before she could reach Tess, the coordinator said something loud enough for us all to hear.
“Ma’am, we received a call from this address. A man told us that the patient has changed her mind. Is she refusing help?”
Daniel stood still.
Before Tess called, someone else had called for help. Now I have to find out why the ambulance didn’t arrive.
“No,” I said so loudly that my voice trembled. “I’m not refusing anything. Just send it.”
Tess repeated my answer into the phone. The dispatcher asked if I was bleeding. I looked down. A dark red bloodstain had begun to spread across my pants.
“Yes,” Tess whispered.
The dispatcher told her to keep me seated and not let anyone drive me away. I sat down on the hallway floor. Daniel reached out and touched my shoulder, and I pulled my hand away.
“Did you call 911?” I asked him.
He glanced at his mother. “I was terrified. They asked a few questions, and Mom said she’d be fine.”
“You told them that I had changed my mind.”
“I think he’ll do it after he calms down.”
Tess stared at him. “That’s not what you said on the phone.”
Elaine ordered her to be quiet. Tess kept her phone on speaker and said, “I heard him say she was asleep and didn’t want anyone coming here.”
I tried to remember the last twenty minutes. While I’d been upstairs changing out of my party clothes, Daniel had taken my phone to “charge it.” He hadn’t brought it back. He must have made the first call while I was upstairs.
“Why did you call before I came downstairs?” I asked.
Daniel’s mouth opened, then closed.
Tess looked at Elaine. “Tell her what happened when she said her back hurt during the party.”
Elaine’s face hardened. “I told her to finish the dishes.”
“You told Daniel to say she didn’t want an ambulance,” Tess said.
A siren sounded outside. Daniel went to the front door, but Tess shouted that the paramedics needed to hear me directly. He stepped aside as two of them came in.
I told them when my water broke, about the bleeding, and about the first 911 call. One paramedic knelt beside me while the other spoke to the dispatcher. They helped me onto a stretcher.
As they wheeled me past the kitchen, I saw my phone under a stack of clean napkins on the dining table. Tess grabbed it and put it in my hand.
“I’m coming with you,” Daniel said.
“No,” I answered.
At the ambulance doors, Tess leaned close. “There’s something else. I recorded Mom at the sink. She saw the water and told Daniel not to let you leave.”
I looked back at Elaine. She wasn’t arguing anymore. She was staring at Tess’s phone.
The paramedic checked the monitor beside me and called to the driver, “We need to go now.”
The doors shut before I could ask Tess to play the recording. The ambulance moved, and I gripped the edge of the stretcher as another contraction tightened across my belly. The paramedic asked me to keep talking to him. He checked my blood pressure, then told the driver which hospital had a neonatal intensive care unit.
“Is my baby okay?” I asked.
“We’re getting you to people who can answer that,” he said. He did not promise me anything.
At the hospital, a nurse met us with a wheelchair. I told the admitting team that my water had broken at home, I was bleeding, and my husband had falsely told 911 I didn’t want help. My voice shook so badly that I had to repeat the last part. Nobody told me to calm down. They asked what I wanted and wrote it down.
An ultrasound showed that the baby needed close monitoring. The doctor explained that the bleeding might be coming from the placenta and that waiting at home would have been dangerous. They started an IV, gave me medication, and watched the baby’s heart rate. When it dropped during a contraction, the room filled with people.
“We need to deliver her,” the doctor said.
