Page 66 of Christmas With A Stranger

Lis is already at the hall closet. She comes out with the hospital bag over her shoulder and her keys in her hand. I see her weigh it, the whole thing, in about a second and a half.

"I'll take her," I say.

She looks at me. Then she sets the keys on the counter and holds the bag out.

"Go," she says. "Please give me an update once you see Dr. Rao. Better to be safe."

In the car, I keep it at the limit and both hands at ten and two. Mackie's got her seatbelt low under the curve of her, and her head against the glass.

"If this is nothing," she says, "I'm going to be so embarrassed."

"Like your mom said, better to be safe."

I want to tell her it's nothing. I've told easier lies. But I don't know that it's nothing, and all of these things lining up have me concerned.

The one thing I have is a piece of worn cardstock with four lines on the back, and I read them in time.

I turn under the hospital overhang. The glass doors slide open and a woman's already coming out with a wheelchair, headed straight for us, before I've got it in park.

Lis must have called ahead.

The wheelchair takes her through the doors, and I park the car all wrong. I'm half over a line, but I don't care.

By the time I find the third floor, they've got her in a gown already, the ties loose down her back. A nurse is pressing two round disks against the curve of her belly, one high, one low. Straps go around. The monitor by the bed splits into two lines, two runs of numbers chasing each other across the screen, and the sound comes up doubled, two fast hooves going out of step and then falling back into it.

"That's both of them," the nurse says. "They both sound good."

The cuff on Mackie's arm inflates on its own. Then it lets go, and a number sits on the screen. The nurse writes it down without saying it aloud. Another nurse ties a band around Mackie's other arm and draws blood into three tubes, one after another, and caps them and carries them off. They send Mackie into the little bathroom with a cup.

I stand where they let me stand. Nobody in the room is wasting a movement.

The cuff goes off again fifteen minutes later. Nobody tells me what it says. I read it off the screen anyway, and I don't like it. Nobody announces the results. People start moving differently before anyone says a word. A nurse reads a screen and her mouth goes flat. Somebody pages somebody.

Rao comes in wearing regular clothes, a T-shirt and sandals, hair down, and that tells me more than any of the numbers did.

"Preeclampsia," she says, "and it's got teeth. There's protein where I don't want it. Your platelets are down, your liver's stressed, your pressure won't come off the ceiling. You're thirty-four weeks." She lets a beat go by. "The treatment is delivery."

Mackie's voice is small and even. "Tonight."

"Right now."

The room changes. Thirty-seven weeks was the plan. We're only at thirty-four.

A male nurse hangs the magnesium and threads it into the line in her hand. Another nurse pushes something into her IV for the pressure and checks the cuff again five minutes later.

Someone turns the lights down low, and the room goes quiet. Within the hour, the magnesium works on her. She goes flushed, red climbing her throat. She turns her head toward the basin, and I get it under her chin before she asks.

"I feel like I'm on fire," she says, "and nothing is funny."

"We can laugh after all of this."

Then the Pitocin goes up.

Lis comes in and takes the chair in the corner. She doesn't take over, sitting there with a worried look on her face instead. She's holding a bag that's open at the top, with the two tiny going-home outfits Mackie and I picked out when we didn't even know if they'd fit.

I wipe Mackie's face with the cold cloth. I watch the drip and count the two lines, over and over, because my hands need a job and this is the only one left.

Baby A's line starts doing something it wasn't doing before. Then the line drops.