Page 208 of Wrong Number Right Doctor

But for the first time in days, I don’t sleep alone.

Chapter Twenty-Five

MAGGIE

The first pain hits while Professor Singh is still talking.

Just a deep, sudden cramp low in my stomach that cuts through whatever he’s saying about placental development and makes me forget the sentence I’m halfway through writing.

I stop moving.

For a second, I tell myself it’s nothing.

I’ve had aches before. Weird pulling sensations. Random stabs. Pregnancy has apparently turned my body into an unreliable narrator, and I’ve already learned that half of it is alarming for no reason.

Still, this feels wrong.

Not unbearable. Just wrong enough that I set my pen down and press my hand lightly against my abdomen under the desk.

Beside me, Simone glances over.

I shake my head once. Not now.

She narrows her eyes, but turns back toward the front.

Professor Singh keeps talking in that dry, steady way of his, as if he’s personally offended by the existence of excitement. Around me, people are still taking notes. Laptops click. Someone coughs. It’s a perfectly normal day, except it’s not. Not for me.

The pain eases after a moment, and I tell myself that’s enough to be reassuring.

I didn’t sleep much last night.

Dalton called.

That was my first warning sign, because Dalton doesn’t call unless something matters enough to break whatever careful distance he’s been trying to keep between us. He sounded tired from the moment I answered, and tired on Dalton never means sleepy. It means he has already thought something through too many times and come to a conclusion he hates.

He told me he was moving. He said it quietly, almost as if he were giving me information I already knew, and that somehow made it worse. He said another city. Another hospital. Better for everyone.

He said it all in that controlled, even voice of his, and I sat on the edge of my bed listening to him rearrange the world while pretending it was the logical thing to do.

I don’t remember much of what I said back. I remember going very cold. I remember asking him if that was really it. I remember hating how calm he sounded, and hating even more that I could hear the strain underneath it. By the time the call ended, I was too angry to cry and too hurt to sleep.

So maybe, I tell myself now, what I’m feeling is just the consequence of all that. Exhaustion. Stress. My body responding to a week that has been too full of bad news and too little rest.

Then the pain comes back. It cuts across my lower abdomen sharply enough that I stop breathing for a second. My hand goes to my stomach under the desk before I can stop it, and the movement alone is enough to make Simone turn fully toward me.

“What?” she whispers.

I try to answer, but another wave hits before I can. It isn’t excruciating, but it is deeper now, meaner somehow, and there’s something about the steadiness of it that frightens me more than the sharpness did. Sharp pain can be random. This feels deliberate.

Simone’s face changes immediately. “Maggie.”

I swallow. “I’m okay.”

She gives me a look so direct and unimpressed that under any other circumstances I might laugh. “No, you’re not.”

At the front of the room, Professor Singh is still talking. He’s moved on to implantation abnormalities now, which feels like the universe showing off. All of it goes on with the unbearable normalcy of a world that hasn’t noticed my body may have decided to go off script.

I try to sit straighter. That’s a mistake.