The nurse shook her head. “We’ll take good care of her,” she said again, as if she heard this request several times a day. It both riled and comforted Margaret. But she had to admit that there was nothing else she could do.

She slouched onto a bench near the door, and as she hoped, George came in shortly after.

“Where is she?” His eyes looked as wild as Margaret felt, strained and worried, but the rest of his collected demeanor demonstrated the reliability that she’d always appreciated in him.

“They wheeled her away. They said we can wait on the fourth floor and they’ll bring us news when they have some.”

*  *  *

“Hey, doll.”

Sharp needles of pain shot through Margaret’s back as she untangled her limbs from a most awkward position. She rubbed her eyes and Gladys came into view.

Where was she?

The hospital! Had she slept through the baby’s birth?

She stood up on wobbly legs and Gladys pulled her into her arms to steady her.

“Did I miss it?” Margaret asked.

“Nah. Dottie wouldn’t dare have a baby while you were asleep. Things slowed down for her as quickly as they’d sped up.”

“What time is it?”

“Just past midnight.”

She remembered now. George had brought her a cold chicken dinner from the cafeteria and magazines from a nearby newsstand. She hadn’t been able to read a word. Even the one with Lauren Bacall on the cover, reminding her of Gladys’s time at the Stage Door Canteen. Instead, she’d watched George pace for hours and hours.

She pulled away from Gladys and looked around. George had at last retreated to the couch across the room, his long frame curled into a ball.

“How did you know to come here?” Margaret whispered.

“Sometime while you were getting your beauty rest, George called the party line at my building incessantly until someone picked up and agreed to leave a note on my door.”

“Is Oliver with you?”

Gladys shook her head, and her curls, flattened from the length of the day, looked as if they, too, had endured much. “He wanted to write his story while it’s fresh in his mind. He’ll join us later.”

Margaret grinned. “Soooo did you have a nice day?”

Gladys shrugged. “If you call it ‘nice’ to spend hours and hours among dusty shelves at the NYPL and being told more than once to shush by a male librarian who wouldn’t know his behind from a cantaloupe, then yes.”

“I mean with Oliver.” Margaret pursed her lips together to keep from giggling.

“Sure, then. It was a nice day.”

“You’re a sphinx.”

“What do you want me to say? That we’re in love and I want to get married and have his babies?”

“Don’t you?”