Chapter 14: Thirty-Five Weeks

The receptionist called 911, and the oldest agent in the building was already gone, so it was a stranger who knelt beside me.

It was the delivery man. He had come back in with a box and stayed to hold my elbow.

Damon crouched on my other side. His face had no color left in it.

"Lena, I'll ride with you."

"You will not."

"I'm the baby's father."

"Then you can be the father who stays in the lobby," I said.

The paramedics came in with a stretcher. One of them looked at Damon, and then at the wet floor, and then at me.

"Ma'am, do you want him in the ambulance?"

"No."

"Then he's not in the ambulance," she said.

On the way to the hospital I dialed Quinn with a shaking thumb.

He picked up on the first ring. "What's wrong?"

"My water broke. I'm at thirty-five weeks."

"Where?"

"I'm in an ambulance. I'm going to the hospital where you were."

"I'm coming," he said, and he hung up.

At the hospital a nurse with a clipboard asked who should be allowed on my floor.

"One person," I said. "Quinn Redmond. And nobody named Carraway. Not a husband, not a mother-in-law, nobody."

"Not even the baby's father?"

"Especially him."

She wrote it at the top of the chart and underlined it twice.

Quinn arrived an hour later, in the van, with his friend from the port pushing the wheelchair down the hall at a run.

His shirt was untucked. His cast was dirty from the van door.

He rolled up to the bed and took in the monitors and the tubes, and my face.

"Hi," I said.

"Hi." His voice cracked on it. "How bad?"

"The doctor says it's early but it's fine. She's the right size. She just wants out."

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