I opened the conversation.
For one second, the words didn’t make sense.
Not because they were complicated.
Because I couldn’t reconcile them with the man standing ten feet away from me.
The first message had been sent by Blake several days earlier, before Leo and I had even come home from the hospital.
He’d told Calista that his Florida trip was already booked and that he wasn’t canceling it for anything.
Then came the part that made my hands begin to shake.
If I got “hysterical” after the baby came home, Blake had written, Calista should take my phone and keep me from ruining his plans.
A later message mentioned my credit card.
Blake expected some of his travel charges to hit it because he didn’t want to use the balance on his own card.
Calista’s response was short and approving.
She’d handle me.
I read the exchange twice.
The ambulance doors were still open at the curb.
A paramedic called my name.
Blake stepped toward me.
“Give me that.”
I moved the tablet behind my back.
It was almost instinctive.
“No.”
His expression changed.
The annoyance disappeared first.
Then the superiority.
What remained was fear.
“Those messages aren’t what you think.”
I nearly laughed.
There was nothing vague about them.
He had predicted that I might need help after giving birth and planned, in advance, to make sure his mother controlled my phone if I interfered with his vacation.
The fact that the emergency had turned out to involve Leo instead of me hadn’t changed his plan at all.
Calista appeared behind him.
“You’re misunderstanding a private conversation.”
“A private conversation about taking my phone?”
She folded her arms.
“We were worried about your emotional state.”
“My baby’s lips are blue.”
Neither of them answered.
The paramedic called me again.
That snapped me back to the only thing that mattered.
Leo.
I carried the tablet with me to the ambulance and climbed inside beside my son.
Blake started toward the vehicle.
One of the paramedics asked if I wanted him riding with us.
I looked through the open doors at my husband.
He still had my credit card in his wallet.
My phone was still inside his mother’s pocket.
And minutes earlier, while our newborn struggled to breathe, Blake had been worried about a flight to Florida.
“No,” I said.
It was the calmest word I’d spoken all morning.
The doors closed.
Inside the ambulance, everything moved quickly.
A small oxygen mask was positioned near Leo’s face.
Wires were attached.
Numbers appeared on a monitor I couldn’t understand, but I understood the paramedic’s expression.
He wasn’t treating me like an exhausted mother inventing problems.
He was treating my son like a baby who needed medical help.
I sat pressed against the wall, one hand resting near Leo’s tiny leg while the vehicle raced toward the hospital.
