Beneath me, pooling rapidly on the pristine white tiles, was a massive, dark crimson stain.
The smell of copper filled the air, thick and suffocating. I was bleeding heavily. This wasn’t the slow progression of labor; this was a catastrophic failure inside my body. My placenta was tearing away.
Trembling uncontrollably, I dragged myself across the floor. My maternity dress was soaked, sticking to my legs. I left a horrific, smeared trail of red across the white tiles, dragging my heavy body toward the living room where the landline phone sat on the console table. My cell phone was upstairs in my purse, a million miles away.
Every inch of movement sent white-hot spikes of agony through my pelvis. The room was spinning, the edges of my vision tunneling into dark gray clouds.
I have to save her. I have to save my baby.
I reached the console table, my bloody, glass-cut fingers fumbling blindly for the receiver. I knocked it off the hook. It clattered to the floor. I dragged the receiver to my ear and blindly punched 9-1-1.
“911, what is your emergency?” a calm, steady female voice answered.
“I’m pregnant,” I sobbed, my voice barely a breathless whisper. “I’m bleeding… so much blood. Thirty-eight weeks. My stomach is hard like a rock.”
“Okay, ma’am, I am dispatching paramedics to your location right now. Can you tell me your address?”
I forced the words out, fighting the heavy wave of unconsciousness threatening to pull me under. “442… Oakridge Lane. But you have to tell them… my husband locked the door. It’s a steel-core smart door. I can’t reach the manual override. I’m on the floor. I can’t move.”
“Stay with me, Madison. They are three minutes out. Do not close your eyes.”
But the pain was a living thing now, chewing through my nerves. The contractions were no longer waves; they were a continuous, crushing pressure. I dropped the phone. The dispatcher’s voice became a tinny, distant buzz.
I laid my cheek against the cold hardwood floor, staring blankly at the front door. The silence of the house was oppressive. Ethan was likely pulling into the valet at the country club right now, handing his keys to a teenager, smoothing his tie, preparing to smile for the cameras.
The distant, wailing shriek of sirens pierced the quiet suburban night. The sound grew louder, more frantic, until red and blue lights began flashing violently through the sheer curtains of the living room window, painting the walls in panicked colors.
I heard heavy boots pounding up the porch steps.
“Ma’am! Can you hear us? Paramedics!” A fist pounded brutally against the thick mahogany wood.
I tried to scream, I tried to tell them I was right here, just a few feet away, but only a pathetic, gurgling whimper escaped my lips. I couldn’t move my arms anymore.
“The door is locked dead! It’s an electronic deadbolt, we can’t kick it!” a deep voice shouted outside.
“Look through the sidelight! Can you see her?”
“Jesus Christ. Yeah, I see her. She’s down in the hallway. Massive hemorrhage on the floor. She’s unresponsive.”
The urgency outside escalated into a chaotic shout. “We don’t have time to wait for a locksmith or PD! Grab the Halligan bar from the truck! Take out the glass, we need to breach now!”
I closed my eyes.
A deafening CRASH exploded through the house. The heavy, decorative safety glass framing the front door shattered inward, raining jagged, heavy fragments all over the entryway rug and across my legs. Through the haze, I saw a heavy metal tool smash through the remaining glass, followed by a thick, gloved hand reaching blindly through the jagged hole, frantically feeling for the interior emergency latch.
The lock clicked. The door ripped open.
The freezing night air rushed over my sweat-soaked skin. Suddenly, my living room was flooded with blinding flashlights and men in high-visibility jackets.
“I’ve got her! Pulse is incredibly thready, she’s going into hypovolemic shock!” a paramedic yelled, dropping to his knees right in the pool of my blood. He didn’t care. He pressed a thick trauma dressing against me and barked orders. “Get the backboard! We have a suspected placental abruption. We need to move, now!”
They moved with frantic, coordinated violence. I was rolled onto a rigid board, strapped down tight, and hoisted into the air. The transition from the quiet, bloody floor of my home to the chaotic, blindingly bright interior of the ambulance was jarring.
Doors slammed. The siren screamed to life, a frantic heartbeat echoing the terror in my own chest.
“Where… my baby?” I managed to choke out, staring blankly at the metal ceiling of the ambulance as it swayed violently around a corner.
The paramedic holding a pressure bag of IV fluids looked down at me, his face grim, his uniform stained with my blood. “We’re going to get you to the hospital, Madison. We’re doing everything we can. Just hold on.”
The next twenty minutes were a terrifying blur of medical jargon, flashing lights, and the squeak of rubber wheels on hospital linoleum. I remember the frantic shouting of trauma nurses in the ER bay. I remember the freezing swipe of iodine across my swollen stomach.
I remember a doctor yelling, “Fetal heart rate is in the sixties and dropping! We have a complete abruption. We need her in the OR for a crash C-section right now! Put her under!”
A plastic mask was clamped hard over my nose and mouth. A nurse leaned close, her eyes wide with urgency. “Count backward from ten, sweetie.”
“Ten…” I whispered. “Nine…”
Then, the world dissolved into absolute, silent, terrifying blackness. I didn’t know if I would ever wake up. And I didn’t know if my baby would be alive if I did.
I did not wake up gracefully. I dragged my consciousness up from a deep, chemical trench, fighting through a suffocating fog of anesthesia.
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