He Never Looked Up at Breakfast, So I Served Him Papers novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: A Tuesday in June

My water broke at ten past seven on a Tuesday in June, in the middle of the breakfast rush.

I was carrying two plates of pancakes to the window table.

I set them down very carefully in front of the feed-store man.

"Dot," I said.

"What?"

"Don't panic."

"I never panic," said Dot, who was already untying her apron.

The whole counter had gone silent.

Nine regulars turned on their stools.

"It's a Tuesday," said the feed-store man, helpfully. "Everything happens on Tuesdays."

"Out," Dot told the room. "Everyone who isn't family, out. Finish your eggs on the sidewalk."

Nobody left.

They stood up with their plates and made a path to the door.

Seth came out of the kitchen at a run, with flour to his elbows.

He saw my face and the floor.

His own face went white and then, to my surprise, perfectly calm.

"The truck's out front," he said. "Sydney, get her bag. Dot, call the hospital. Elise, can you walk?"

"I can walk."

"Can you walk to the truck?"

"I'm thirty-nine years old, and I'm having a contraction in a diner," I said. "Give me your arm."

He gave me his arm, the left one, with the scar.

Halfway to the door, the contraction hit, and I closed my fist in his sleeve and forgot every number I knew.

"Breathe," said Seth.

"I'm breathing."

"Count."

"I can't count."

"Then I'll count," he said, in the steadiest voice I have ever heard from a man. "One. Two. Three. That's it. You're doing math."

I laughed, and it turned into a groan, and he held on.

It is forty minutes by road to the county hospital.

Seth did it in twenty-six.

Dot rode in the back seat with her phone in one hand and a rolled towel in the other, calling out the speed limit at each intersection and then telling him to ignore it.

Sydney followed in her car, laughing and crying and filming nothing.

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