Chapter 23: Her Name

"Don't you dare drive," I said. "Dario, I will kill you."

"I'm not driving. Nobody is driving. The head of security is driving."

"Then tell him to go faster."

"Sir," the head of security said from the front seat, in a voice of enormous calm, "ma'am, we are doing ninety on the Strip."

"Then do a hundred."

We did a hundred.

I held the strap above the window with one hand and Dario's wrist with the other, and I crushed it every time a contraction came.

He did not say a word about it.

At the hospital the nurse met us at the door with a chair.

"How far apart?"

"Four minutes," said Dario.

"Two," I said.

"Two," Dario agreed, and wrote it on his hand with a pen.

They put me in a room with a window that looked on the desert.

The doctor from the night in the garage came in with her sleeves already rolled.

"Thirty-five weeks," she said. "That's early, but it's a good day to be born. Let's see."

She checked me, and her eyebrows rose.

"Seven centimeters," she said. "You've been in labor since the penthouse. You didn't feel it?"

"I felt it," I said through my teeth. "I thought it was Dario."

Dee, who had arrived at the door in a robe and one slipper, snorted so loudly that a nurse jumped.

"Should I stay?"

"If you leave, I'll hunt you down."

"I'll hold her leg," said Dee, and took her place at the bed.

The next hour was the longest of my life.

I swore at the ceiling, at the monitors, and at the man who had given me this baby.

Dario held my hand and said he was sorry for all of it.

"I'm so sorry. I love you. I'm sorry. Breathe."

"Don't tell me to breathe!"

"I won't."

"Tell me something else."

He leaned down, his forehead wet with sweat that was not mine.

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