Chapter 8 - The Red Line
The emergency bay doors of Saint Jude Memorial Hospital flew open the second our tires screeched against the heated concrete pavilion.
A trauma team of eight—nurses, respiratory therapists, and an obstetric surgeon in blue scrubs—swarmed the vehicle before I could even shift into park.
Dr. Ronald Miller himself was at the front of the pack.
"Emma Harris!" Miller barked, ripping the back door open. "What's the last recorded pressure?"
"One-ninety-five over one-twenty," Sarah shouted from inside, tumbling out of the car. "One documented generalized tonic-clonic seizure fifteen minutes ago. Fetal bradycardia down to ninety-five beats per minute."
"Get her onto the gurney!" Miller ordered. "Call OR 4, tell them to prep for an immediate general-anesthesia Cesarean section! Push four grams of magnesium sulfate IV bolus right now! Move, move, move!"
Emma was pulled from the back seat in a blur of gray blankets and plastic tubing. Her face was ashen, her lips parted, her breathing shallow and wet.
I lunged forward, grabbing the edge of the rolling gurney as they sprinted through the automatic double doors into the emergency wing.
"Emma! Emma, can you hear me?"
Her eyes opened slightly, unfocused, glassy with medication and trauma. "David... our baby..."
"He’s going to be fine, Emma. You're going to be fine. I'm not leaving you. I am right outside that door."
Dr. Miller put a heavy hand against my chest as the gurney reached the red line marking the sterile surgical corridor.
"Mr. Harris, you stop here," Miller said, his eyes severe behind his surgical mask. "She has severe preeclampsia with HELLP syndrome symptoms. Her liver enzymes are likely critical. We have to deliver this baby in the next four minutes or we lose them both. You cannot be in this operating room."
"Please," I choked out, grabbing his scrub top. "Save them. Take whatever I have. Just save them."
"Your money doesn't mean a damn thing in that room, David," Miller said coldly, echoing the brutal truth I had spent six months avoiding. "Only her heart does. Go to the waiting room."
The double doors swung shut, locking with a sharp magnetic click.
The corridor went silent.
I stood alone under the fluorescent lights, my boots dripping mountain slush onto the pristine linoleum floor, my hands shaking so violently I couldn't clasp them together.
A hand touched my shoulder.
I turned, expecting Marcus, ready to endure whatever hatred he had left for me.
It was Rachel.
She was standing in the hospital corridor, still wearing her black coat, her car keys dangling from her fingers. Behind her sat Marcus Campbell on a vinyl waiting room chair, his face buried in his hands, weeping in complete, broken exhaustion.
"How did you get here?" I whispered.
"I called the highway patrol when you blew through the barricade," Rachel said softly. "The dispatcher told me the troopers were escorting you in. I took a cab from my father’s house."
I looked at Rachel—the woman whose grief I had used as a shield to hide from my own responsibilities.
"I'm sorry, Rachel," I said, the words heavy and hollow. "I used you. I let myself believe I was helping you because I was too cowardly to face what was waiting for me at home."
May you like
Rachel looked at me with sad, forgiving eyes. "I know, David. And I let you do it because I was lonely and drowning. But that's over now. Your life is behind those doors. Go sit down. You have a long wait."
***
