“Not once. No calls. No messages. Nothing.”
“Then why are you here?”
He looked toward the room.
“She was here.”
Was.
That one word changed everything.
“What do you mean, was?”
James swallowed.
Then the story came out in pieces.
Anna had been seven months pregnant when her husband left her.
Apparently, he simply disappeared from the marriage and relocated several states away.
Her mother had died the year before.
Her father had been absent most of her life.
She had no siblings and almost no close family nearby.
That morning, around four, she went into labor.
She tried driving herself to the hospital.
The contractions became too strong, so she stopped at a gas station and called an ambulance.
She delivered a little girl several hours later.
The baby was healthy.
Anna was not.
Something happened after the delivery.
Severe bleeding.
Emergency procedures.
Doctors trying everything they could.
James struggled to repeat the medical terminology.
It didn’t matter.
I understood the ending.
“She died?”
He nodded.
I stared at him.
“How did anybody know to call you?”
