weekend mornings debating op-ed columns, while everyone else was in church.
Bruce moved through the doors back into the corridor, past the desk. With each step he took away from the boys, he felt a familiar uptick in his level of unease; to be away from them was to doubt anew their well-being and to subject himself to the clutching sense that he was exposing them to more terrible risk. He tried to ignore the feeling, stretched his stiff arms over his head and pressed his fingers ceilingward as he walked, cracking his knuckles. A woman with a long braid and a baby face sat in a wheelchair, looking pained and abandoned. A man—an overgrown boy, really, in a baseball cap and cargo pants—stood with his back to her, hunched over his cell phone. Cell phones weren’t allowed this close to the NICU. Their signals could interfere with the monitors, though everyone seemed to use them. The alternative was the decrepit pay phone in the waiting lounge, or the long, circuitous trek back to the hospital entry. Bruce himself had made calls from here before. He’d called Charlotte’s family, updated them on the twins’ imminent delivery, called his father, checked his messages, a thousand years before.
“Excuse me,” Bruce said to the man’s back. He said it softly, the faint smile he’d attempted for Sophia resurrected on his lips.
The man didn’t respond, perhaps hadn’t heard him. He continued to talk into his mouthpiece, his voice husky, not quite a whisper. When Bruce tapped him and he turned, his eyes were bright. He looked excited. Bruce almost felt bad for the guy.
“Okay, okay,” he said to whomever he’d called. “I’ve gotta go. Yeah, for sure, we’ll keep you posted!”
“Hey,” he said to Bruce, the word a question, as he snapped his phone shut. He looked at Bruce as if he expected to know him, expected in the next second to receive more good news. His face was open, smiling.
“Hi. I just wanted to let you know that you’re not supposed to use that in here.” Bruce gestured toward the phone. He felt himself working to keep his own expression blank, to banish the apology from it. His heart raced. What was it that had made him stop for this one, when yesterday he’d ignored another?
“Oh.” The man looked around. “Okay. Do you work here?” His eyes narrowed slightly, though his smile remained in place.
“No.”
“I was calling my wife’s parents to tell her we’re about to have a baby,” the man said, his voice even.
“I know. Still. There’s a rule.” Bruce felt an odd thrill—there had been one time at Bancroft when he’d almost fought a boy named Pete Harvey, had experienced those few seconds that existed between a provocation and the moment the response would come, his body taut, alive with a kind of ecstatic, out-of-nowhere indignation.
“Thanks. It doesn’t look like anyone’s around. But thanks.” The man’s voice gathered a subtle, progressive edge of sarcasm as he spoke; he turned a few degrees away from Bruce, his eyes bugging at his wife, whose face Bruce decided not to look at again.
“It interferes with the machines. Some people on this floor are hooked up to important machines.”
“Ted,” the woman said. Her voice was coaxing, even playful. The name emerged from her mouth sounding swooping, prolonged. He’s clearly a wacko, honey, let’s focus on the big picture. This, too, will be part of our birth story, the funny part, the part when Ted almost lost it, brave Ted, keep it together, Ted, I am having contractions right now, this is nothing, a fraction of a moment, it’s already gone. I’m over here, look at me, honey, and smile again. Our room is almost ready.
“My twins are hooked up to heart monitors in the next room. All I know is that they tell me cell phones could interfere, so you see my problem. I know you wouldn’t want to be responsible for any interference.”
Now the man’s features contracted. Bruce watched him. Something was happening. Ted’s jaw worked, and he wouldn’t look Bruce in the eye. This struck Bruce as curious and caught him momentarily off guard—he’d expected … if not an apology, then at least a pass, a connection, a tacit forgiveness. But he felt calm overall—poised, adrenaline having already permeated his body with its false high. He took a breath, measuring the inhale and the exhale deliberately, slowly.
“I’m really sorry to hear that, buddy. Good luck. All I’m trying to do is get my wife