Chapter 4

He did not come down the hall. He let a housekeeping cart go past him, turned around, and got back in the elevator.

I finished my shift. All twelve hours of it. I took her pressure at ten and at two. I brought ice. I wrote my name on that board and left it there.

At seven that night my phone lit up in the locker room.

Come home. We'll figure this out. Nobody on that floor needs to know.

I looked at it until the screen went dark.

He sent another one at ten past.

She's scared. Don't make this about the assignment. Just come home.

I put the phone in my bag and drove to the house.

His truck was in the driveway. The kitchen light was on. He was at the table in yesterday's dress shirt with the cuffs rolled, two mugs out, as if this were a night we had both come home from something ordinary.

"You didn't answer," he said.

"I was on the floor."

"Nora." He stood up. "Did anybody see? Denise. Marcy. Anybody."

Not are you all right. Not what time do we go. Did anybody see.

"Denise saw me at midnight in a dress," I said. "Marcy heard me ask to be taken off fifteen. Then I took her anyway."

He closed his eyes. "You can't be her nurse."

"There was nobody else."

"Then call out. I'll talk to Marcy. I'll say—"

"You'll say what? That you're the father?"

He looked at me the way he looked at a gate left open. Like the problem was still something he could go handle.

"I'm going to take care of this," he said. "She's got nobody here. Her mother's in Ohio. I just need you to not blow it up on the floor. Come to bed. We'll talk in the morning."

I stood in my own kitchen with twelve hours of her chart still in my hands, in my head.

"Brady."

"Yeah."

"This morning a doctor put a needle in my breast. I told you it was the dentist. I was going to tell you after your night."

He stopped with his hand on the chair.

"What?"

"Two weeks for results."

"You should have told me."

That was his sentence. You should have told me. He was not frightened for me. He was caught out, and being caught out is the only thing that has ever made that man hurry.

"Sit down," I said.

He sat.

"When did it start with her?"

"Nora—"

"Not how long. When."

"March."

"March." I did the arithmetic out loud. "You started in March. In June you sat in the fertility clinic and held my hand. In August we put four thousand dollars on the card for the second round. In October you stood on a stage and said she was the one who believed in you."

"It's not like that."

"Then tell me what it's like."

"It's an accident," he said. "I'm going to handle it."

"What does handle it mean?"

"It means I take care of my responsibilities."

"And me?"

He looked up. "You're my wife."

He said it the way you set something down on a table. Like it settled the matter.

I picked up my bag.

"Where are you going?"

"Not here."

"Nora. Come back tonight. She's still upstairs. If you walk out now, people are going to ask questions I can't—"

I opened the door.

"Don't wait up," I said.