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The doctor ignores her. “I want to keep you here for observation a little longer. Fluids. Something for the cramping if it doesn’t settle. And I’d like your OB informed.”

Simone nods before I can answer. “Acharya. Got it.”

The doctor turns to speak to the nurse, and Simone drifts a few steps away, phone already in her hand.

I close my eyes for a second. The pain is still there, but duller now, heavy and mean instead of sharp. That almost makes it worse, because now there’s room left in my head for everything else. Dalton’s voice from last night. The word moving. The way he said it like he was trying to make the decision sound clean.

I hear Simone talking quietly somewhere beyond the curtain, but I don’t pay attention.

A few minutes later, the curtain moves. I look up automatically.

And there he is.

For a second, I genuinely think I’m imagining him. That would make sense. Stress response, right? Hallucinate the one person you’ve spent the whole day trying not to think about.

Then Dalton steps fully into the room, and the air changes.

He looks like he came fast. Jacket open, tie loosened, hair slightly out of place, face set in that hard, controlled way he gets when he’s scared and refusing to let it show. His eyes find me immediately.

I stare at him. “What are you doing here?”

Simone appears at his shoulder, gives me one brief, unapologetic look, and says, “I called him.”

I blink at her. “You⁠—”

“Yes,” she says. “Because I have a functioning brain.”

Before I can decide whether to kill her or cry, the doctor on duty turns back toward us, and Dalton is already all the way into the room, attention shifting from my face to the chart to the monitor to the IV bag and then back to me again.

“What happened?” he asks the doctor.

The doctor glances at him, clearly placing him correctly within half a second. “Cramping during class. No bleeding. Fetal heart rate reassuring. Vitals elevated on arrival, but they’re settling now. At this point, likely stress-related.”

Dalton’s eyes flick to the numbers on the monitor, then to the vitals noted on the chart clipped at the foot of the bed. “Pain level now?”

“Lower than when she came in,” the doctor says. “Still present.”

Dalton nods once, then looks at me. Really looks at me.

And because we both know exactly what kind of stress could put me in a hospital bed like this, because we both know what this week has been and what last night was and what he told me, something in my face must give way. My eyes burn immediately.

I hate that. I hate that he sees it.

“Maggie,” he says quietly.

I turn my face away. “This is humiliating.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“It really is.”

“No,” he says again, softer now. “It isn’t.”

The doctor clears his throat. “We’re going to keep her here a little longer.”

Simone straightens. “What do you need from me?”

The doctor glances toward the door. “Pharmacy order’s being sent down. I’ll go over the meds.”