Chapter 22: Choose

The nurses had Simone out of the chair before I understood what the alarm meant.

"Decelerations," one of them said. "She goes to labor and delivery. Now."

"Who's family?" the second asked.

Nobody answered for a moment.

Simone gripped the arm of the nearest nurse, and her face had gone gray under the fluorescent lights.

"Dad," she said again.

My father stood up so fast his chair fell over.

Everyone in the room watched him cross it.

He stopped beside her wheelchair and put his big left hand over both of hers.

Then he looked at me.

"I'm going with her," he said.

He didn't say it as a question, but he waited for my answer.

"Go," I said.

"Jeanie..."

"She's your daughter. She's scared. Go."

His eyes filled, and he nodded once.

They took her through the double doors with my father walking beside the bed, and the doors swung shut.

The lounge went quiet except for the beeping of a monitor nobody had turned off.

Thirty people sat among the foil trays.

A woman in a green sweater got up and took her purse from the back of her chair.

"I think," she said carefully, "we'll go and let the family be."

"Please stay," Florence said.

The woman looked at her for a long moment.

"I don't think so, Florence."

She went out.

A man followed her, and then two women, and then the whole room, in twos and threes, without raising their voices.

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