Chapter 2 - The Ambulance Ride
The first thing I remember was the ceiling.
White ambulance panels. Harsh fluorescent lights. A square vent rattling above me every time the vehicle hit a bump. Something cold pressed against my face, forcing air into my lungs through a plastic mask.
“Emma, stay with me.”
The paramedic’s voice cut through the fog.
She was the woman with dark hair from the kitchen. Her name tag said MARTINEZ. One hand held the oxygen mask in place while the other adjusted an IV line in my arm.
I tried to speak, but my chest felt like it had been packed with wet cement.
“What happened?” I rasped.
“You’re having trouble maintaining oxygen,” she said. “Your heart rate is very high, and your blood pressure is dropping. We’re taking you to Mercy Medical Center.”
My mother’s voice came from somewhere near my feet.
“Can I ride with her?”
“Only one family member can ride,” the second paramedic said.
“I’m her mother.”
Daniel stepped forward before anyone else could answer.
“I’ll go,” he said.
Mom stared at him. “Excuse me?”
“She needs someone calm.”
The silence that followed was sharper than any shouting match I had ever heard between them.
My mother looked like she wanted to argue. Then she looked at me.
I must have looked worse than I felt, because her face collapsed.
“Please,” she whispered. “Let me go.”
Daniel’s jaw tightened, but he stepped back.
The ambulance doors shut.
As we pulled away from the curb, I heard the siren start.
My mother sat beside me, holding my hand so tightly her rings pressed into my skin. For the first few minutes, she did not say anything.
Then she whispered, “I’m sorry.”
I stared at the ceiling.
The apology should have mattered.
Maybe it did.
But I could not reach it.
Not while every breath felt borrowed.
“Emma,” Paramedic Martinez said, “I need you to answer a few questions. Do you have asthma?”
I shook my head.
“Any heart condition?”
“No.”
“Any allergies?”
“No.”
“Have you had chest pain before today?”
I hesitated.
My mother’s hand stiffened around mine.
“Yes,” I whispered.
Martinez looked up. “How long?”
“A few months.”
My mother turned toward me. “What?”
“Sometimes,” I said, struggling for air, “at night. Or when I’m stressed.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
I almost laughed.
It came out as a painful cough.
“I did.”
Mom’s eyes widened.
“You said I was anxious,” I managed. “You said I watched too many videos online.”
Her face went pale.
There had been other moments.
The time I woke up at 3:00 a.m. with my heart hammering so hard that I thought it would burst through my ribs. Mom told me to drink water and stop “working myself up.”
The time I got dizzy during my shift at the grocery store and had to sit in the stockroom. Uncle Ray said I was lazy because I did not want to unload boxes.
The time I nearly fainted at school and the nurse called home. Mom told the school I had skipped breakfast.
Maybe I had skipped breakfast.
But I had also been scared.
And nobody had listened.
The ambulance lurched around a corner.
My vision dimmed.
“Emma!” Martinez called. “Look at me.”
I tried.
Her face swam in and out of focus.
Then the monitor began making a different sound.
A rapid, urgent beeping.
“Her rhythm is changing,” the second paramedic said.
My mother started crying.
“What does that mean?” she asked.
Martinez’s tone stayed calm, but something in her eyes changed. “It means we need to get there fast.”
The ambulance accelerated.
I felt hands on my chest. Electrodes. Straps. More voices over the radio.
“Mercy, this is Unit 14. Eighteen-year-old female. Severe shortness of breath, cyanosis, tachycardia, hypotension. Suspected pulmonary embolism or cardiac event. ETA two minutes.”
Pulmonary embolism.
The phrase meant nothing to me then.
Later, I would learn it meant a blood clot could be blocking blood flow in my lungs.
Later, I would learn that it could kill someone quickly.
But in that moment, all I understood was my mother whispering my name like it was the only prayer she knew.
The ambulance doors flew open at the emergency entrance.
Everything became motion.
Doctors. Nurses. Wheels rolling. Bright lights racing above me as they pushed the stretcher through automatic doors.
“Emma Parker, eighteen,” Martinez called out. “Symptoms began approximately twenty minutes before arrival. Oxygen saturation fell to seventy-nine in transport. Blood pressure eighty-six over fifty-four.”
A doctor in green scrubs leaned over me.
“I’m Dr. Patel,” he said. “Emma, we’re going to take care of you.”
I wanted to ask if I was dying.
But I did not have enough air to form the words.
They moved my mother away.
I heard her calling after me.
“Emma! I love you!”
Then the curtain closed between us.
The emergency room became a blur of needles, alarms, questions, and pain.
“Any recent travel?”
“No.”
“Any birth control medication?”
I nodded weakly.
“Any family history of blood clots?”
My mind struggled to focus.
Then I remembered something my biological father had once mentioned years ago, before he moved out of state.
His sister—my Aunt Melanie—had been hospitalized after a clot in her leg.
“I think…” I whispered. “My aunt.”
Dr. Patel glanced at the nurse. “Get a CT angiogram. Now.”
Within an hour, they had the answer.
A large blood clot had traveled into my lungs.
A pulmonary embolism.
The doctor explained that it was serious. Dangerous. Possibly linked to a genetic clotting disorder, made worse by medication and ignored symptoms.
But they had caught it.
Barely.
When I woke in the intensive care unit later that night, the first face I saw was Caleb’s.
He was sitting in a chair beside my bed, wearing the same hoodie from dinner. His eyes were swollen from crying.
“You scared me,” he said.
My throat was dry. “Sorry.”
He shook his head hard.
“Don’t say sorry. You were sick.”
The words were simple.
But they broke something in me.
Because all day, everyone had treated my fear like an inconvenience.
My pain like an act.
My body like a problem to solve after the dishes were done.
Caleb reached for my hand carefully.
“I knew you weren’t pretending,” he whispered.
Then he looked toward the door, where Mom stood alone.
“She knows now too.”
I looked at her.
For the first time in my life, my mother looked afraid of losing me.
May you like
And somehow, I was not sure whether that made it easier or harder to forgive her.
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