I held the phone out and peered at it. It was not Georgia; it was Zadie.

“Oh, sorry,” I said. “I was expecting Georgia—she just called.”

“Oh,” said Zadie. “So you already know.” Her voice, usually so lilting and animated, held a curious flatness.

“Know what?”

“I thought you just spoke with Georgia.”

“No; I missed her. I thought you were her, calling back. What’s wrong?”

“Hannah’s sick,” said Zadie. A choked keening filled the phone; she’d given up the effort to hold off tears. “It’s bad, they think.”

“Oh no,” I breathed. I backpedaled through the room until I bumped the arm of a chair and fell into it. “What— Tell me what you know.”

“Georgia texted her a few times to ask something and she didn’t answer, even after a day. That’s nothing like Hannah; she’d never ignore a message from one of her regular patients for that long, let alone from Georgia. She didn’t know Harry’s number, so she sent Jonah over to leave a note on their door and Harry texted her. She’d been sick but was doing okay at home at first.”

“Is she—is she in the tent hospital?”

“No, she’s in the regular hospital because of the late-term pregnancy. They can’t deliver a baby in the tent.”

“She’s what—twenty-seven weeks? She’s not in labor, is she? Is she on a ventilator?”

“I don’t know.” Zadie’s voice broke again. “I don’t know. Georgia said she’d text us all as soon as she speaks to Harry.”

I sat, unmoving, after the call ended. Every few minutes the headlights of a passing car sent a strobe of white light juddering across the wall; from somewhere outside came the sound of a dog barking in short, agitated bursts. Otherwise darkness and stillness pervaded the room. A heaviness fell over me, binding me to this chair. I couldn’t imagine moving.

The phone buzzed again, this time with a text sent from Georgia to all of us: Kira, Compton, Vani, Zadie, and Emma. All of us except Hannah.

From Harry: H on vent

A short period of nothing, everyone frozen in the act of digesting this news. Zadie followed with a question.

What about the baby?

For an unbearable length of time: nothing. Then, finally, three blinking dots indicated Georgia was typing something. Given how much time elapsed, I expected a lengthy message, but when the reply came through, only three words appeared on the screen:

Waiting to see

—