The dog had been right. The people had been embarrassed.
Inside the room, Mia asked, “Claire, are you having any pain?”
“No. I mean—” Claire stopped.
Alex caught the pause.
Mia caught it too. “Tell me.”
Claire pressed her lips together. “My back’s been tight all day. And there’s been some pressure, but that’s normal. My doctor said pressure can be normal. I called yesterday because I was nervous about flying, and they said if there was no bleeding and no regular contractions, I could go.”
“Any dizziness?”
“I’m always dizzy lately.”
“Any bleeding?”
“No.” Claire answered that one quickly, almost defensively. “No, nothing like that.”
Mia looked toward the doorway. Alex could not see her face from where he stood, but he knew the tone in the room had shifted. It no longer belonged entirely to security.
Nate lowered the handheld scanner he had been preparing. “Should we get medical?”
Claire looked alarmed. “No. I don’t need medical. I just need to sit for a minute. I’m scared because of the dog.”
Ranger barked once, a hard sound that bounced off the corridor walls. Alex corrected him automatically, but the command came out softer than usual.
“Ranger, enough.”
The dog went quiet. He did not relax.
Claire inhaled, and the breath caught halfway. One hand moved from the top of her stomach to the lower left side. She frowned, more confused than frightened at first, as if her body had spoken in a language she did not understand.
Mia stepped closer. “Claire?”
“I’m okay,” Claire said, but the words were thin.
Then she bent forward.
The ultrasound photo slipped from her hand and skated across the floor, stopping near the doorway. Alex saw the small gray profile on the glossy paper, the curve of a forehead, the blur of a tiny hand near the face. He also saw Claire’s knuckles turn white against her coat.
Mia was already beside her. “Nate, call airport medical now.”
“No, wait,” Claire said, but she could not straighten. “It’s just—oh God.”
Alex felt Ranger surge against the leash. This time the dog did not bark. He gave a sound almost like a cry.
Karen stepped into the room. “Claire, we’re getting you checked out.”
“My flight,” Claire said, as if that still mattered because she needed something ordinary to hold on to. “My sister’s already driving.”
“We’ll call her,” Mia said. “You don’t have to think about that.”
Claire looked at Alex then. Not at Ranger, not at Mia. At Alex. Her eyes were wet, but the fear in them had changed shape. “Is he smelling something bad?”
Alex opened his mouth and found he could not give her the professional answer. The honest one was worse.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But he doesn’t act like this for no reason.”
Airport medical arrived in under four minutes, though later Alex would remember those minutes as a long stretch of sounds: Ranger’s claws on tile, Claire trying to breathe through pain, Mia’s low voice counting with her, Nate speaking into his radio, the wall clock carrying on as if it had no stake in any of this.
The first paramedic through the door was a broad-shouldered man with a shaved head and reading glasses pushed up on top of it. “I’m Ben,” he said, crouching in front of Claire. “We’re going to take a look, okay?”
A woman with a medical bag knelt beside him and wrapped a blood pressure cuff around Claire’s arm. Claire tried to apologize again, but the sentence collapsed into a low moan.