Chapter 1 - The Stranger at the Door
The doorbell rang again.
I tried to answer, but another contraction ripped through me so violently that my entire body curled around my stomach.
“Help…” I whispered.
The word barely left my lips.
Whoever stood outside must not have heard me, because the bell rang a third time. Then came a heavy knock.
“Mrs. Carter?” a man called. “I have a package for you.”
I recognized the voice.
It belonged to Daniel Hayes, the widowed man who had moved into the house across the street three months earlier. I had spoken to him only twice. Once when his dog wandered into our yard, and once when he carried my groceries inside after seeing me struggle with the bags.
I tried to stand.
My legs collapsed beneath me.
The side table tipped over with a crash, sending a lamp shattering across the hardwood floor.
Daniel stopped knocking.
“Mrs. Carter?”
Silence.
Then his voice changed.
“Emma, are you all right?”
I gathered every bit of strength left in my body.
“Hospital!”
The word came out as a scream.
The front doorknob rattled.
“It’s locked!”
I crawled toward the entryway, dragging my useless legs behind me. Each movement felt like broken glass tearing through my abdomen.
“Daniel…” I gasped. “Please…”
A few seconds later, the narrow window beside the front door shattered.
Daniel reached through the broken glass, unlocked the deadbolt, and rushed inside.
He froze when he saw me.
I was on the floor in soaked clothes, gripping my stomach as blood spread beneath me.
“Oh my God.”
He dropped the package and knelt beside me.
“The babies,” I sobbed. “Something is wrong.”
Daniel immediately pulled out his phone.
“My neighbor is thirty-eight weeks pregnant with twins,” he told the emergency dispatcher. “Her water broke, she’s bleeding heavily, and she can’t feel her legs.”
He took off his jacket and placed it beneath my head.
“Stay with me, Emma.”
“My husband left.”
Daniel’s expression tightened.
“What?”
“He went to the mall.”
For half a second, he simply stared at me.
Then another contraction hit.
I screamed so loudly that Daniel’s face turned pale.
He held my hand while the dispatcher instructed him to check my breathing and keep me from pushing.
“The ambulance is coming,” he said. “You are not alone.”
But I could feel one of the babies moving lower.
“I can’t stop it.”
Daniel looked toward the front windows, listening for sirens.
“Just a little longer.”
“I’m scared.”
“I know.”
“No,” I whispered, tears running into my hair. “I’m scared they’re dying.”
Daniel squeezed my hand.
“They are still fighting. So are you.”
The sound of sirens finally rose in the distance.
Relief flashed across Daniel’s face.
But it disappeared when he looked down.
A tiny foot was visible.
The first baby was coming breech.
Daniel turned back to the dispatcher.
“The baby’s presenting feet-first!”
The dispatcher’s voice sharpened through the phone.
Daniel followed every instruction, trying to keep me calm while the front door burst open and paramedics flooded the living room.
One of them checked my blood pressure.
His face changed instantly.
“She’s crashing.”
Another paramedic examined me.
“Cord prolapse. We need to move now.”
They lifted me onto a stretcher.
The ceiling lights blurred above me as they carried me through the doorway.
Daniel ran beside them.
“Her family doesn’t know.”
“Call my husband,” I whispered.
Daniel found Travis’s number on my phone and called.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
No answer.
Then he called Deborah.
She answered with loud music and laughter behind her.
“Who is this?”
“Your daughter-in-law is being taken for an emergency delivery,” Daniel said. “She’s hemorrhaging.”
Deborah sighed.
“Emma loves attention. Tell her we’ll be home soon.”
Daniel’s face went cold.
“She and the babies may die.”
Deborah hung up.
As the ambulance doors closed, Daniel looked at the blood-covered living room.
The broken lamp.
The soaked sofa.
The tiny trail of red leading toward the front door.
Then he noticed the security camera above the hallway entrance.
A small green light was still blinking.
May you like
It had recorded everything.
Including the moment Travis abandoned me.
