Chapter 3 - Six Women and One Locked Telephone
The clock over Charlene's kitchen sink had a small chip on its wooden frame.
I remember that detail because I stared at it while trying to decide how urgently to speak.
At twelve minutes past one, my back pain had shifted from dull discomfort to waves that made me stop talking.
At twenty-seven past, I had asked Charlene whether we should call my doctor.
She pressed a pie plate into my hands instead, saying a distraction would settle my nerves.
At 1:40, I knew beyond doubt that whatever was happening was not something a distraction could fix.
Later, when people asked why I didn't simply take my keys back, I thought about the way physical pain narrows the world.
Standing meant effort.
Speaking meant effort.
Even reaching across a kitchen counter felt enormous.
Charlene was not a stranger who took me by surprise.
She was a person I had been trained for five years to obey in her own house.
The six church women were people I knew by sight.
Bernice Toiver had been the church secretary since before Wes learned to drive.
Doris Hanley led the meal committee and was always quick to send sympathy cards.
Elaine Mercer handled the church flower arrangements.
Jo Ellen Price took photographs at ministry events.
Ruthie Gann was the retired elementary teacher who corrected everyone's grammar.
Martha Willis was the newest volunteer and rarely spoke when Charlene was nearby.
I knew their names because Charlene spoke about them constantly, ranking their usefulness like items on a grocery list.
That afternoon every one of them saw me grip the counter.
Every one of them saw what came out of my body.
Every one of them watched Charlene pocket my keys.
They later remembered different details, but they all remembered that.
"Shouldn't she sit down?"
Doris asked after Charlene dismissed my request for the hospital.
"Yes," Charlene said sharply.
"That's what I've been saying."
It was a small, almost clever twist, turning the question from whether I needed medical attention to whether I should be seated.
I tried to explain that sitting would not stop the bleeding.
Jo Ellen lifted her phone, possibly intending to call somebody, but Charlene saw the movement.
"Put that away," she said.
"I won't have photos of my kitchen turning into gossip."
The women became still again.
I was frightened by how easily concern could be redirected into politeness.
At work, written policies protected people from powerful personalities.
In that kitchen, a woman's social position had become the only policy anyone respected.
I tried to call Wes from my cellphone.
The call never connected, and the battery icon was almost empty after an afternoon of searching for reception.
I considered climbing onto the porch, where reception sometimes improved, but a sudden gripping pain made me bend forward.
Charlene interpreted that as proof that I needed a nap.
"We'll put you in the guest room," she said.
"After pie, Ronnie can drive you if you're still making a fuss."
Ronnie was at a bass tournament on Stockton Lake and would not be back for hours.
Charlene knew that.
She also knew that Springfield was nearly an hour away.
I asked her to give me my keys.
"You're in no condition to drive," she replied.
She was right about that one thing, but she used the truth as a reason to prevent every other option.
"Then call an ambulance," I said.
"Please.
I don't care who sees."
Her face hardened.
"I care.
This family has a reputation."
Bernice was the first person besides Amos to take a step.
She rose with her coffee cup still in her hand and said that she would call her granddaughter, who worked at a clinic.
Charlene ordered her to sit down.
Bernice hesitated.
In the front room, the Cardinals announcer murmured through an old television.
I could hear a crowd cheering a routine play while my entire body seemed to be falling away from me.
I thought of my mother working a late shift in Aurora, of Wes watching a gray Gulf horizon, and of our daughter's tiny socks folded in a dresser.
I wondered whether the baby could feel my panic.
I tried to slow my breathing.
The movement in my abdomen felt different now, quieter than earlier that day, though I couldn't know whether that meant anything.
I wanted a clinician to tell me.
I wanted someone who had equipment, training, and the ability to act.
Amos had been sitting in his recliner with the volume low, but later he told me he heard the sentence about the ambulance.
He had heard enough of Charlene's voice over the years to know when she was more worried about being challenged than about being right.
What brought him to his feet, he said, was a new sound.
"I heard you say please like you were running out of air," he told me.
He walked into the doorway and studied the stain on the floor.
He had been married for more than sixty years before his wife died.
He had accompanied her to births, surgeries, and a final hospital stay.
He didn't pretend to understand obstetrics, and that was precisely why he acted.
"Anybody who says she needs a hospital that badly gets a hospital," he later said.
"You don't vote on that over dessert."
When he took the Ford keys from their nail, Charlene followed him through the kitchen, protesting that he was too old to drive.
He answered with the sentence about praying, but he did not slow his hands.
He fetched his boots from the mudroom and asked Bernice to bring a clean towel.
Bernice went at once.
Martha rose and opened the back door.
It was the first small crack in Charlene's hold over the room.
"You're encouraging nonsense," Charlene said to them.
Nobody answered.
Amos kept his arm around me as we crossed the porch.
My legs felt unreliable, and I clung to the sleeve of his plaid shirt.
He had to pause halfway down the steps while a contraction passed.
His breathing was measured, though I could see he was scared.
I apologized to him for making trouble.
He stopped and looked me in the eyes.
"Trouble is somebody refusing to help you," he said.
"You aren't trouble."
Bernice carried my handbag to the passenger side and found my phone inside.
"I'll try calling emergency services from the driveway," she said.
She stepped away from the house, raised the phone, and finally caught enough signal to place the call.
I heard her give the address and explain that a pregnant woman was bleeding.
The dispatcher asked questions she couldn't answer.
Amos told her to say we were leaving in the green truck and heading toward the main road.
He did not wait for her to finish describing every symptom before helping me into the seat.
I later learned that an ambulance was sent to intercept us.
At the time, all I knew was that someone had finally said the word ambulance without whispering it in shame.
Charlene appeared on the porch again.
Her apron pocket still bulged with my keys.
"Laurel, don't make this into something it isn't," she called.
I stared at her through the open passenger door.
I wanted to demand my keys and ask why she had treated me like an inconvenience, but pain made the question impossible.
Amos closed the door between us.
Bernice put my purse beside me and squeezed my hand through the window.
"I'm sorry," she said.
Those two words sounded small after nearly twenty minutes of silence, yet they mattered because she was finally acknowledging that something wrong had happened.
Amos started the Ford.
The engine rattled, caught, and settled into a familiar deep rumble.
As we turned down the drive, I saw Charlene standing beneath her sign about a blessed home.
Her face was not frightened for me.
It was furious that someone had disobeyed her.
May you like
I looked away and pressed my palm against my belly.
My daughter's future had become a matter of minutes, and the road to Springfield had never seemed so long.
