Chapter 8: Not Past This Door

Noelle's POV

They induced me at thirty-five weeks and two days, on a gray Thursday, because the numbers on my chart would not come down.

My father drove, and Dalton followed in his truck, and neither of them said a word to the other the whole way.

The room on the labor floor looked out on the lake.

A nurse hooked me up to a drip and a monitor and told me this could take all day.

Dalton had slept on the porch for nearly two weeks straight, and he had the shadows under his eyes to show for it.

He hadn't mentioned Colette once since the day he moved her out.

She was out. I knew that because my father had driven by Dalton's house three times to check.

"Hungry?" Dalton asked me now.

"I'm not allowed to be hungry."

"I know. I wanted to ask."

I almost smiled, and then the first real contraction took the smile off my face.

It came up from my back and closed around my stomach.

I gripped the bed rail.

"Breathe through your nose," the nurse said.

"I am breathing through my nose."

"Breathe through it harder."

Dalton was at my side before I had finished the thought.

He didn't ask whether he could hold my hand.

He put it in both of his, and I let him.

It was the baby's day, and I was not strong enough to refuse him anything.

By noon the pains came every four minutes, and by two they came every two.

My father had been sent out to the waiting room with a cup of coffee and strict instructions.

"I want to hear it ring," he said at the door. "When she's born, I want to hear a bell or something."

"Dad, there's no bell."

"There should be a bell."

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