Point Hope Read Online Free PDF

she picked up the phone and spoke with a shaky voice. “Yes?”
    “Rosette?” a rough voice asked. Harry. Trey’s boss.
    “Y-yes?”
    “It’s Amanda. She has you and Trey down as her emergency contacts. We just brought her into the ER. We need you here right away. I tried Trey and couldn’t get him. Is he there?”
    She said yes again and listened without hearing the rest of Harry’s words before ending the call.  
    OhMyGod OhMyGod OhMyGod. Rosette threw back the covers and ran out of the room, down the stairs, and into the living room, hitting the light switch on her way as she almost charged right into the couch.
    She startled Trey so badly that he threw up his hands, flinching and turning away. Great. Not a flashback now. She needed him.
    “Amanda’s at the hospital. We need to go.”  
    He shielded his eyes from the light. “She’s in labor?”
    A momentary relief sank through her, warm and comforting. Of course Amanda was just in labor. Why hadn’t she thought of that? Because Harry sounded… “I don’t know. Harry called and said she’s in the ER, and we need to get there right away.”
    Trey rose as she spoke. She caught sight of his expression only briefly, but it didn’t calm her fears. Something had to be wrong. Maybe Amanda went into labor too early due to grief. Maybe they were looking at an emergency C-section and needed family there.
    Realizing she was in her pajamas, Rosette ran back upstairs to change. She yanked on a pair of jeans and pulled a sweater over her pajama top. She emerged and found Alex in the hallway.
    “What’s going on?” His face was white, his arms crossed protectively.
    “Amanda’s in the hospital. I need you to stay with the kids.” She was at the top of the stairs by then, pausing for a split second, the words “it’ll be okay” in her mouth. But she couldn’t make herself say it. In the dim light from the bathroom, she could see his pinched face.
    She hurried back and wrapped an arm around him in a quick hug.
    “Okay, but call me, please? When you know what’s going on?” he said. He must have heard her talking to Trey.
    She called, “I will,” on her way down the stairs. She grabbed her coat and pulled it on. Trey was dressed and walking toward the door leading into the garage. He didn’t have a coat on, but one look at his face kept her from mentioning it. He started the car and opened the garage door all in the same second, and then the car flew backwards. She grabbed the door handle and only buckled once he’d put the car into drive.
    It would take about thirty minutes to drive up Cape Arago Highway, over the bridge, and then across to the other side of Coos Bay where the hospital was located. The time ticked by in painful silence. The wipers had a slight squeak as they ran back and forth. She’d always hated squeaky wipers. In fact, she usually had them changed whenever she took her car in for an oil change. Trey didn’t seem to notice the noise at all. She prayed he would notice the wet road conditions while driving.
    She moved her head just enough to see him without really looking at him. He gripped the wheel and stared ahead with a scary intensity. She wanted to say something, to hear him say it’d be okay, but it was about that time she remembered. He wasn’t really her husband anymore.
    Focus on Amanda. What if something were terribly wrong? Maybe the baby was in trouble. Her labor must have come on suddenly because she would have called otherwise.
    She couldn’t believe she’d been in the bath daydreaming. Why hadn’t she stayed with Amanda? Summer was just a messed-up kid, even at twenty-one. They shouldn’t have left Amanda alone with just Summer there.
    Please don’t let the baby die. Please-don’t-let-her-die, pleasedon’tletherdie.
     
    ~  ~ ~
     
    Alex went downstairs for a glass of juice. That’s what he told himself. His entire body was stiff. That feeling of gripping something too long and then not being able to