yards away, and transformed himself into the Dr. Cheng Yale knew. Then he knocked on the door.
Fiona gave up on her questions and scooted closer so she could stroke the skin between Yale’s eyebrows. He couldn’t stand to be touched anywhere else anymore, but that one spot worked. He closed his eyes.
He said, “When I was a kid, I used to shut my eyes in the car when we were ten minutes from home. And then I tried to feel it, feel that last corner that was the driveway. I tried not to count the turns, just sense when we were home. And I usually could.”
Fiona said, “I did the exact same thing.”
“And when I couldn’t breathe, I was doing it too, but with—you know, with the end of things. And I know I’ll wind up doing it again. I’ll lie here with my eyes closed, and it feels like, Okay, this is it. This must be it. Only it’s not.”
“Sometimes it was like that with the car too,” Fiona said. “Didn’t you ever have that? It would feel like you were done, and you’d open your eyes, and it was just a red light.”
“Yes. Yeah, it’s like that.”
He was glad she didn’t tell him he was being morbid.
“That glow of the red light,” she said. “Do you remember how magical the glow of a red light at night was? As a kid? Just being outside after dark.”
He remembered.
He thought he might cry then, thought his body might wrack itself with dry tears, but Fiona stopped stroking his forehead and when he opened his eyes he saw that she was already crying herself, and it stopped him. He said, “I’m okay. It’s okay.”
But she was shaking her head fast and he saw, turning, how tightly she gripped the bar of his bed. Her face had gone pale even as her cheeks had gone red.
He said, “Fiona. What.”
“My back hurts.”
“Your back?”
“I think—”
“Hey. Hey, it’s okay.”
She gasped in air as if she’d been holding her breath, which maybe she had. “The thing is, it keeps spasming like two minutes apart. But it’s in the back.”
“That sounds like contractions, Feef.”
“It’s probably just those false ones, those Brixton whatevers. But I keep thinking maybe I should like—no, don’t do that!” Yale had pressed his call button. “Why’d you do that?”
“Maybe don’t have your baby on the AIDS ward.”
“I’m not having—it’s not due for four weeks.”
“And I wasn’t supposed to die till I was eighty.”
Debbie was already in the doorway. “Not me this time,” Yale said.
Fiona said, “I’m okay.”
“You don’t look okay,” Debbie said.
“Is there—there’s a maternity ward here, right? Or do I have to go around to the ER?”
“Heavens! Well yes, we do provide that service. One-stop shopping. Let’s get you a wheelchair.”
“They’re not even that bad,” Fiona said. “I mean, I’m basing that on the movies, people screaming and whatever, but they’re not that strong. It’s just, they’re coming pretty fast.”
Debbie said, “Here’s what we’re doing. I’m calling up to maternity, I’m getting you an escort up there, no ER for you, and Yale is sitting very tight and I’m staying right with him all night. Maybe you come back a lot skinnier, maybe you come back a couple ounces bigger. Okay?”
And Fiona, who appeared to be holding her breath again, squeezed Yale’s hand and nodded. “But they’ll—can you keep me filled in? If I’m there a while, I want to know what’s happening. I still have power of attorney, right? Even if I’m up there?”
“We can call you,” Debbie said, “and you would not believe how fast I can make an orderly run.” She was already beckoning someone in from the hallway, already picking up Yale’s phone to call Labor and Delivery.
* * *
—
When Yale woke from night sweats, Debbie was still there. Fiona was resting, she said, and they were trying to delay the labor. Her husband was on his way from Canada, where he’d been speaking at a conference. She’d let Yale know as soon as she heard anything. Meanwhile, she’d get his sheets changed.
His heart felt bad. He could feel it working so hard, a fist trying to break through a wall. Which was exactly what Dr. Cheng said would happen. “The thing about you having multiple concurrent pathogens,” he’d said, “is we’re going to treat them all, but the treatments won’t necessarily get along. And it’s a lot of medicine, a lot of IVs, a lot of fluids. The risk is that we’re going to stress your heart