I stood on the sidewalk for a moment that I cannot accurately describe in terms of duration. It felt very long and also like no time at all. One hand was on my stomach and the other was reaching back toward where the car door had been. My heart was hammering. The pain was still there, cresting and then backing off slightly, and I could not tell yet whether it was contractions or something else, could not tell whether I was about to go into labor on a residential street in the middle of a Tuesday morning, could not fully believe that this was what was happening.
I started to walk in the direction of a larger intersection I could see at the end of the block, because walking felt like doing something and I needed to be doing something. After three or four steps another wave of pain hit and I bent forward with my hand pressed hard against my lower abdomen.
A woman across the street had been unloading grocery bags from the back of an SUV. She saw me. She left the bags sitting in her trunk and came across at a near-jog. She introduced herself as Dana and the ordinariness of the name made it easier to focus on her face, which was open and alarmed and entirely on my side.
“Ma’am, are you okay? Do you need help?”
“I’m pregnant,” I said, as if that were not immediately obvious. “I think something’s wrong.”
