Chapter 3 - The Broken Trust and Preterm Alarm
"Are you happy now?" Colin shouted, the moment the sound of car engines faded down the driveway. "Are you proud of yourself?!"
He kicked a blue balloon across the floor. It popped against the baseboard with a loud crack, but I didn't even flinch.
"You just humiliated me in front of everyone I care about!" he continued, pacing back and forth, his face flushed red. "My mother wept in the driveway, Tessa! My aunt had to carry her bags out in the cold! They came here to celebrate us, to support us, and you treated them like criminals!"
"Support us?" I echoed, my voice cold and hollow. "Colin, look around this room!"
I pointed to the kitchen counter. "They ate two months of food I cooked while standing on swollen feet! They ripped the wooden mobile my sister spent three weeks carving for our baby! They left garbage on the rug, and when I asked for help, you handed me a trash bag!"
"It was a party!" Colin yelled back. "Mess happens at parties! We could have cleaned it together tomorrow morning! But no, you had to throw a dramatic temper tantrum because you couldn't handle being a gracious host for one single night!"
"I am thirty-four weeks pregnant!" I screamed back, the emotion finally breaking through my wall of detachment. "Dr. Yates told me three hours ago that I am having premature contractions! She gave me a medical warning! I texted you from the parking lot, Colin! I told you I needed to rest!"
Colin paused, but instead of guilt, his expression hardened into skepticism. "Oh, please. You always use your health as an excuse whenever my family is around. You had a mild cramp and suddenly you’re an invalid?"
That was the moment something died inside me.
It wasn't just anger anymore. It was a cold, absolute realization that the man standing in front of me did not love me. He loved the convenience I provided. He loved the quiet, compliant wife who made him look good to his toxic mother.
I opened my mouth to tell him to pack his bag, but before the words could form, a sudden, blinding pain exploded across my lower abdomen.
It wasn't like the light, irregular tightness I’d felt at the clinic. It was a sharp, searing cramp that pulled my breath right out of my chest.
I gasped, my hands instinctively flying to the bottom of my stomach. My knees buckled under my own weight.
"Tessa?" Colin’s voice changed instantly, the anger faltering.
I sank onto the hard hardwood floor, curling inward as another wave of intense pressure gripped my spine. A cold sweat broke out across my forehead.
"Tessa!" Colin rushed forward, dropping to his knees beside me. "Hey—hey, look at me. What’s wrong?"
"The... the baby," I choked out, tears finally streaming down my cheeks as I struggled to breathe through the cramp. "Colin... call an ambulance."
He went pale. The reality of Dr. Yates’s warning suddenly slammed into him like a freight train. He fumbled frantically in his pocket for his phone, his hands shaking so violently he almost dropped it twice.
May you like
"Yes! Emergency!" he screamed into the receiver. "My wife—she’s thirty-four weeks pregnant—she’s in severe pain! Please, hurry!"
I lay on the cold floor among the blue balloons, the crushed paper cups, and the scattered baby clothes, clutching my bump and praying with every fiber of my being that my daughter would hold on.
