Chapter 5 - THE DRIVE TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM
By 8:00 a.m., Marco had packed our bags, strapped Sophia safely into her car seat, and insisted on driving me to Suburban Hospital’s emergency department. The car ride was suffocatingly quiet; every bump in the Maryland asphalt sent a white-hot spike of agony shooting from my lower back down into my right heel, making me bite my lip until it bled. Marco kept glancing over at me with wide, panicked eyes, stuttering out variations of how sorry he was and how he honestly thought postpartum recovery was just “really tough on everyone.”
I stared out the passenger window at the passing strip malls and brick office buildings, feeling entirely detached from him. When we pulled into the ambulance bay, Marco tried to jump out and open my door like a devoted husband, but my legs completely refused to support my weight as I swung them toward the pavement. He had to catch me under the arms, lifting my trembling body into a wheelchair provided by an intake attendant. As we were wheeled through automatic sliding doors into the bright chaos of triage, I realized my body had crossed the line from manageable postpartum pain into something catastrophic.
