“My son is on his way,” Ethan said.
He ended the call and picked up his keys. Madison tried to remind him what the doctor had told them. He said he was going to the party. If she was so worried, she could call her sister.
Then he did the unthinkable. From his phone, with a few taps on the screen, he locked the front door behind him. The smart lock clicked shut. Madison was trapped inside her own home.
“My husband locked the door,” Madison whispered into her phone, now lying on the cold kitchen floor. “I am on the floor. I cannot move.”
Her sister Claire stayed on the line with her. Minutes felt like hours. Finally, Madison heard sirens in the distance. Boots on the porch. A stranger shouting through the door.
They had to force the door open to reach her.
The ambulance ride and the rush into the hospital blurred together. Madison remembered asking about her baby over and over. She remembered masked faces moving quickly around her. Then everything went dark as she was taken into surgery.
When she woke up, Claire was sitting beside the hospital bed, still wearing her work blazer with a coffee stain on the sleeve. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying.