Chapter 7: The Phone in the Hall

At ten past eight on the night of the library gala, the first real contraction took my breath.

I was in bed at Margaret's with the drawing board on my knees, sketching a door latch.

The pencil snapped.

I pressed my palm to the top of my belly and counted until it let go.

Nine minutes later it came again.

"Margaret," I said, not loudly.

She was up the stairs before I finished her name.

One look at my face and she grabbed the phone.

"Ambulance," she said to the dispatcher. "Thirty-three weeks. Spotting, and the pains are coming close together."

When she hung up, she knelt by the bed and took both my hands.

"Who do I call?"

"The doctor."

"I've done the doctor. Who else?"

I breathed through the next one.

Five years ago, in a courthouse garden, I had promised never to ask him for anything I could carry myself.

"Harrison," I said.

"You're sure?"

"I want to see if he comes."

Margaret looked at me for a second.

Then she picked up her phone and dialed the number I read out to her from memory, the one she had never once had to use.

He was on stage at the library when his phone rang.

I know because three hundred people saw it.

A guest posted the video before I was even in the ambulance.

He stood at the lectern with the bronze bust of Conrad behind him.

He read Margaret's name on his screen, and he did not finish his sentence.

"I have to go," he said into the microphone. "My wife is in labor."

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