I sat there for a full minute after they drove away, not because I couldn’t move—the contractions were painful but manageable at that point—but because I genuinely could not believe what had just happened. My brain was trying to process the fact that my husband, the father of my child, had actually left me to drive myself to the hospital while in labor.

But it was happening. And I had two choices: fall apart or drive. I drove.

The twelve minutes to Williamsport Hospital felt like twelve hours. By the time I pulled into the emergency lot, my contractions were four minutes apart and getting worse. I parked crooked across two spaces and didn’t care. I called my sister Janelle from the parking lot, sobbing between contractions. Janelle is thirty-six, works as a paralegal at a family law firm in Philadelphia, and has never liked Brent. She answered on the second ring, and I could barely get the words out. She didn’t ask questions. She just said she was getting in her car and she’d be there as fast as she could.

Philadelphia to Williamsport is about two and a half hours. She made it in two. But first, I had to check myself in alone.

The humiliation of that experience is something I’ll never forget. The intake nurse asked for my emergency contact and I wrote “N/A.” She asked where the baby’s father was and I said he was unavailable. She and the other nurse exchanged a look—that look women give each other when they understand something without words.

One of them, a kind woman in her fifties named Rita, squeezed my hand and said, “Honey, you’re stronger than you know.”