Chapter 23: Five Weeks Early

Harrison was across the dance floor before I had finished saying his name.

He handed Caleb to Harriet without a word.

She took the boy against her good shoulder, and her cane clattered to the parquet, and neither of them noticed.

"Go," Harriet said. "Go, go."

Harrison's arm came around my back, and the ballroom parted in front of us.

The car was already at the curb, because Eileen had seen my face from across the room and run for the driver.

She climbed into the back seat with me in her evening dress and a coat over it and took my wrist without asking.

"Thirty-five weeks and two days," she said. "Water broke at the gala. How far apart?"

"Four minutes."

"Okay. Breathe like you tell your patients to."

"I don't tell them to breathe."

"You should," Eileen said. "Harrison, hold her other hand and don't talk."

He did what she said.

We reached Mass General faster than the driver had ever driven anywhere.

I remember the ceiling lights and the wheels of the bed, the brisk voices of people I had passed in hallways for six years.

I remember Eileen, in scrubs now, saying "Fine, he can stay" to someone, in the voice she used on residents.

At two in the morning, I was in a labor room with my hair stuck to my face and my feet in stirrups.

The pain came, and peaked, and left.

I had no thought left in me but the next one.

Harrison stood by my head.

He had taken off his jacket and rolled his sleeves, and he kept his hand open and still in front of me.

He did not touch me unless I touched him first.

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