The leash had rubbed a raw place across Caleb Warren’s palm before the security guard reached him.
“Hold up. You’ll have to take him back out.”
Caleb stopped beneath the sign for the maternity elevators. Rain slipped from his cuffs, and beside him Jasper planted his wet paws on the floor. The golden retriever’s ears were raised, his attention fixed beyond the guard’s shoulder.
“I need to get upstairs.” Caleb tried to pull air all the way into his lungs. “My wife’s here.”
A nurse left the admissions counter. She took in the green leash, the dripping coat, Caleb’s shirt with one side hanging lower than the other.
“Is somebody coming to collect your dog?”
“No.”
“Then we need you to arrange that before—”
“Our baby’s here, too.”
The guard lowered the hand he’d been holding out. The nurse asked for Caleb’s name, and when he gave it, she looked toward the telephone on her desk.
He knew that look already. Upstairs, people had begun recognizing him before he introduced himself. They stopped speaking when he approached. They offered chairs.
“The Warrens,” she said quietly.
Caleb tightened his grip. Jasper’s oval tag tapped once against his collar, then went still.
“I’m sorry,” the nurse said. “But he can’t go onto the maternity floor.”
From somewhere deep in Jasper’s chest came a wavering sound. Caleb bent his head over the leash. He had heard that sound in their kitchen that morning, before Nora dropped the cup.
He should have listened then.
The cup had been sitting beside the dish rack, its tea gone cold. Nora was trying to reach around the dog to rinse it, and Jasper kept shifting sideways to stay against her knees.
“Caleb, come get your son.”
At the dining table, Caleb looked up from the car-seat instructions. He’d already installed the base in the truck twice and brought it back inside because he didn’t like the way the latch felt.
“The furry one or the one you’re carrying?”
“The furry one. The other one’s behaving.”
But her voice had lost its teasing edge by the time Caleb reached the kitchen. Jasper stood across the narrow space between Nora and the refrigerator, blocking the way out. Usually he greeted Caleb by searching for something to carry: a slipper, a grocery receipt, once an entire bath towel. Now his mouth was empty, his eyes on Nora.
She wore an old college sweatshirt with the cuffs stretched loose. At thirty-seven weeks, she had begun bracing one hand on furniture before changing direction.
“He tried to follow me into the shower,” she said. “And he won’t leave my stomach alone.”
“He’s been waiting for his promotion.” Caleb patted his thigh. “Come on, Jas. Let her move.”
The dog didn’t turn.
Nora rested a hand beneath her belly. “Look at him.”
Caleb did. Jasper’s back legs trembled slightly, although the kitchen was warm.
Their house outside Brensett, Michigan, had spent months accommodating worry. Nora counted movements. Caleb checked the route to the county medical center after every road closure. They had packed the hospital bag early and then left it by the bedroom door, unwilling to put it in the truck as if they could guarantee a trip with a happy ending.
Nearly two years before, their daughter had died when Nora was twenty-one weeks pregnant.
Afterward, Caleb had repaired a sticky window, replaced the furnace filter, and reorganized the garage while Nora lay awake upstairs. He could remember every task. He had more trouble remembering what he’d said to her.
Jasper arrived four months later.
At the shelter, Nora had stopped outside his run while Caleb was still reading the card attached to the next one. The young retriever was too thin, with a patch of fur missing near one elbow. Instead of joining the barking around him, he had leaned his forehead against the gate where Nora’s hand rested.
She stayed there until an employee asked whether she wanted to meet him.
On the ride home, Jasper climbed halfway across the seat and slept with his head on her leg. Nora kept one palm spread over his ribs for most of the drive.
Now she looked down at him and attempted a smile.
“Maybe he heard me threaten to vacuum.”
The cup struck the sink before Caleb saw her fingers open. Ceramic cracked against steel. Nora caught the counter with both hands.
“Caleb.”
He was beside her when her knees bent. She made a short, stunned noise and pressed one hand low against her abdomen.
“Call someone,” she said. “This isn’t right.”
Jasper barked hard enough to startle them both.
Caleb got Nora onto the kitchen floor, supporting her shoulders against his arm while he fumbled with his phone. The emergency dispatcher asked him questions. He answered some of them twice. Jasper circled the room, returning each time to push his nose toward Nora’s hand.
The paramedics arrived while Caleb was still trying to remember whether the front door was unlocked.
One knelt on the damp hem of his own coat. The other opened equipment beside the refrigerator. Nora kept looking past them toward the dining room.
“The hat,” she said.
Caleb leaned closer, certain he’d misunderstood.
“On the table. The yellow one.”
Her mother had bought it years before, before illness had emptied her apartment and brought the boxes of her things to their house. A little knitted cap, pale yellow, with a turned-back edge. Nora had found it while sorting photographs and held it so carefully that Caleb had asked whether it was coming apart.
“No,” she’d said. “I just wish she could see him in it.”
Now a paramedic was asking Caleb to step aside. Nora reached from the stretcher and caught his sleeve.
“Bring it.”
“I will. I’ll be right there.”
Jasper tried to climb into the ambulance. The paramedic blocked him gently with a leg, and the dog scrambled backward on the wet pavement.
“He’s been trying to tell us,” Nora whispered.
Then they lifted her in.
Caleb shut Jasper inside the house and called their neighbor from the truck. Dottie Bellamy had a key. She was seventy-three, retired from the post office, and capable of making Jasper sit by raising one eyebrow.
“Go,” she told him. “I’ll handle things here.”
As he backed out, he heard the dog howling through the door.
At the medical center, a nurse took Nora’s stretcher through a set of doors Caleb wasn’t allowed to follow. A physician explained that the placenta might have separated. There was bleeding. They needed to deliver the baby immediately.
Caleb signed where a finger pointed.
He remembered the clock in the family room because one hand appeared to be stuck. He watched it until it moved, then watched it again. His phone lay facedown on the chair beside him. Nora’s sister should have been called. So should his father. He couldn’t imagine beginning either conversation.
When Dr. Vivian Cho entered, Caleb stood too quickly and knocked the chair against the wall.
“Nora?”
“She’s out of surgery. We’re treating the blood loss, and she’s being watched closely. She’s stable.”
He nodded, once, ready for her to continue.
The doctor pulled the other chair nearer but didn’t sit.
“Your son had no breathing or heartbeat we could detect when he was delivered. The team worked to resuscitate him.”
Caleb stared at the stethoscope hanging from her neck.
“For how long?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“Then keep going.”
“Caleb.”
“Get somebody else. There’s somebody else in this building.”
Dr. Cho didn’t look toward the door.
“We couldn’t bring him back.”
He shoved the chair away from his legs, then reached behind himself for it. The doctor waited while he sat.
Nora was awake when they brought him to her. A nurse named Ruth Delaney stood beside the bed, explaining that they could spend time with their baby, that photographs were available if they wanted them. She set a small packet on the windowsill without opening it.
Caleb had thought he would know what to do when he saw his son. He had imagined his own large hands learning the careful business of a diaper, a button, a supported head.
Instead, he sat beside a bassinet and looked at a little face turned toward the light. The baby had Nora’s upper lip. A crease crossed one wrist where the blanket had slipped.
Three weeks earlier, they had agreed on Owen.
Nora wanted to keep the name between them until she could say it to him. Caleb had pretended to object to the secrecy. That evening, while she showered, he’d written it inside the nursery closet, down near the floor behind the blanket basket.
He couldn’t say it now.
Nora opened her mouth once, then pressed her lips together and turned toward the rain running down the glass.
Ruth offered to move them into a quieter room when Nora was able. Caleb nodded without consulting her, then hated himself for nodding at anything.
His phone vibrated in his pocket.
He silenced it. A moment later it started again, and then a third time.
Dottie’s name filled the screen.
In the hall, Caleb put the phone to his ear.
“I’m sorry to keep calling,” she said. “But I can’t settle him.”
“Who?”
“Jasper, honey. He’s torn the mesh out of your screen door. I got him back inside, but he keeps running up to the baby’s room.”
Caleb leaned against the wall.
“He found a little yellow hat,” she continued. “He carries it to the door, then goes upstairs again. I’ve never seen him like this…”
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