“No,” agreed Harry with a fond smile. He leaned across the table to kiss her. “I guess you wouldn’t.”

They’d tried everything Hannah’s reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialist (REI) had recommended. As a physician, Hannah had known what to expect, but even so, this had been demoralizing beyond anything she could have imagined. For whatever reason, none of her embryo transfers had taken. None of them: they’d had not so much as a single heartbeat to celebrate. They’d agreed: the most recent implantation attempt—performed more than a month ago now—would be their last. Labs so far had been promising, but Hannah wasn’t going to allow herself to hope until she saw a heartbeat on a screen.

Today she’d know, one way or the other.

As they made their way through the parking lot and then the lobby of the doctors’ office building and then the elevator and the back entrance to Hannah’s own practice—a multidisciplinary group with different ob-gyn specialists—Harry never let go of her hand. Her fingers had started to ache, but she didn’t try to pull away. It wasn’t until they were settled in the exam room of Nia Epps, Hannah’s partner and REI specialist, that Harry finally seemed aware his paw-like hand was crushing Hannah’s fingers.

“Oh shit,” he boomed, causing someone passing by in the adjacent hallway to speed up. “You need these hands to operate!”

“I’m fine,” she assured him, although secretly she had to stifle the urge to rub her damp, macerated fingers.

“I don’t know if you can tell this or not,” he said, in the sort of faux-confiding tone one used when trying to be funny but also speaking the truth. Above his mask, his eyes crinkled but didn’t quite meet hers. “But I’m a wee bit nervous.”

“Me too.”

“What are we going to do after this? Blow off work?”

She smiled up at him. “I’m going to stay here and see patients, and you’re going to drive the car down to the base and go to meetings, and then you’re going to come back and pick me up.” Harry, who was ex-military, worked for the Naval Base San Diego as a contractor. “No matter what happens, we’re going to carry on with our regular day, okay? We can celebrate tonight.” Or mourn, added some contrary voice in her mind, even though she did not believe that would be necessary. This time, she’d be pregnant.

“Either way, I might have to have a beer after this.”

“Harry. You will not.”

Before he could work this little tease into a whole routine, the door swung wider and Nia swished in. Nia stood at least five foot ten but invariably wore killer stilettos, so next to Hannah’s sweetly rounded five-two, she resembled an alien species. Hannah found herself at times intimidated by Nia’s unceasing accumulation of accomplishments: she’d graduated from one of the finest fellowships in the country, she played the cello at a near-virtuoso level, and her memoir about her mother’s experience as an immigrant had just been picked up by the country’s largest publisher.