Chapter 3 - THE EMPTY CHAIRDaniel left for Paris two days later.
He kissed my forehead before leaving.
Then he bent and placed one awkward hand against my stomach.
"Behave for your mother," he murmured.
Annie kicked beneath his palm.
Daniel smiled.
It was small, but real.
For a moment I saw the man I had once married.
I nearly asked him again not to go.
Then I remembered the suitcase downstairs.
The car waiting outside.
Olivia's name on the itinerary.
And the fact that a man who wanted to stay didn't need to be begged.
So I said nothing.
The first three days passed uneventfully.
Daniel called each evening.
The conversations were brief.
He asked about my blood pressure.
He asked whether I had contractions.
He asked whether Annie was moving normally.
I answered.
Neither of us said we missed the other.
On the fourth night, I woke at 2:13 a.m. with pain low in my abdomen.
At first I thought it was another Braxton Hicks contraction.
Then another came seven minutes later.
Then another five minutes after that.
I called my doctor.
She told me to go straight to the hospital.
My hands were trembling so badly I could barely dress.
I called Daniel from the back seat of the car.
No answer.
I called again.
Nothing.
I sent a message.
I'm having contractions. Going to the hospital. Please call me.
At the hospital, a nurse attached monitors to my stomach.
Annie's heartbeat filled the room.
Fast.
Steady.
Beautiful.
The doctor examined me.
Her expression changed.
"Emma, you're in labor."
I stared at her.
"No."
"You're three centimeters dilated."
"No, I'm only thirty-two weeks."
"I know."
"Stop it."
My voice cracked.
"Please stop it."
They gave me medication.
They gave me steroids to help Annie's lungs.
They tilted the bed.
They told me they were going to try to buy time.
An hour.
A day.
Anything.
I called Daniel again.
Straight to voicemail.
At 5:40 a.m., Rachel arrived.
She walked into the room wearing sweatpants and two different socks.
One look at my face and she stopped asking questions.
She took my hand.
"I'm here."
I started crying.
Not because of the pain.
Because those were the words I had needed to hear.
I'm here.
Rachel was.
Daniel wasn't.
At seven, William arrived.
He was seventy-eight and walked with a cane after hip surgery, but he came straight from Connecticut without waiting for a driver.
"Where is my idiot grandson?"
I closed my eyes.
"Paris."
"Does he know?"
"I can't reach him."
William's face turned hard.
He stepped into the hallway with his phone.
I heard only fragments.
"Find him."
"I don't care what meeting he's in."
"Then interrupt it."
Two hours later, Daniel finally called.
By then, the contractions were stronger.
I stared at his name on the screen.
For one terrible moment, I didn't want to answer.
Then I did.
"Emma?"
There was panic in his voice.
It was the most emotion I had heard from him in months.
"Where are you?"
"The hospital."
"How far along are you?"
"Four centimeters."
"Jesus Christ."
I closed my eyes.
"Where were you?"
Silence.
"Daniel."
"We had dinner after the negotiations."
"With Olivia?"
Another silence.
That was enough.
I laughed weakly.
"Of course."
"Emma, listen to me."
"No."
"I'm getting on the first flight."
"No, you're not."
"What?"
I gripped the hospital sheet as another contraction began.
"You always say you're coming later."
"Emma—"
"Later after the dinner."
I breathed through the pain.
"Later after the meeting."
Another breath.
"Later after Olivia."
"Stop."
"No."
My voice broke.
"I have spent four years coming later."
Rachel looked away.
Daniel went silent.
Then he said, "I'm coming home."
The doctors held off labor for almost fourteen hours.
Then Annie's heart rate began dropping.
Suddenly, the room filled with people.
A nurse adjusted monitors.
Someone put an oxygen mask over my face.
My doctor leaned close.
"Emma, we need to deliver."
"Is she okay?"
"We need to move now."
"Is she okay?"
"We're going to take care of her."
That wasn't an answer.
I remember the ceiling lights passing above me as they rushed my bed down the hallway.
I remember Rachel running beside me until someone stopped her.
I remember asking for Daniel once.
Only once.
No one answered.
Annie was born by emergency C-section at 8:47 p.m.
She didn't cry immediately.
That silence is still the longest sound I have ever heard.
Then someone said, "We've got her."
I turned my head.
All I saw was a flash of red skin.
A tiny leg.
Three people surrounding a warmer.
"Can I see her?"
"Just a moment, Mom."
"Is she breathing?"
"We're helping her."
"Please."
Then they brought her close enough for me to see her face.
She was impossibly small.
Her eyes were closed.
A clear mask covered most of her nose and mouth.
"Hi," I whispered.
My voice broke.
"I'm your mom."
Then they took her away.
Daniel missed her birth.
He also missed the first night she stopped breathing long enough for three nurses to rush to her incubator.
He missed the first time I touched her hand through the plastic opening.
He missed the neonatologist explaining that premature babies could improve beautifully and then suddenly crash.
He missed me standing beside Annie at three in the morning bargaining with a God I wasn't even sure I believed in.
He missed the morning her oxygen numbers stabilized.
He missed the first time a nurse said, "She's a fighter."
He missed all of it.
Flights were disrupted by severe weather over the Atlantic, but even knowing that didn't erase the fact that he had been unavailable for hours before he tried to leave.
One day became two.
Two became three.
A connection was canceled.
Then another.
By the fifth morning, I had stopped asking when Daniel would arrive.
That was also the morning I called a divorce attorney from the hospital family room.
Her name was Patricia Sloan.
Rachel had quietly sent me her number months earlier after the birthday incident.
I had never used it.
Until then.
"I don't know whether I'm ready to file," I told her.
"That's all right."
"I have a premature baby in the NICU."
Her voice softened.
"I'm sorry."
"My husband is coming home."
I looked through the glass wall toward the corridor leading back to Annie.
"And I think I need to know what my options are before he gets here."
We spoke for thirty-seven minutes.
Custody.
Property.
Residences.
Temporary arrangements.
Nothing dramatic happened.
No music played.
No thunder cracked over Manhattan.
I simply listened.
Asked questions.
Took notes on the back of one of Annie's medical information sheets.
Then I hung up.
For the first time in years, I felt afraid of my future without feeling trapped by it.
Daniel arrived three hours later.
He entered the NICU.
He saw Annie.
He asked to hold her.
And when he whispered that he was sorry, I realized something he didn't yet understand.
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He thought he was arriving at the beginning of our recovery.
I knew he had arrived after the end.
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