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“Hannah.” He sounds out of breath. “I just got your message—I was swimming. What happened? Are you okay?”
She swallows. Will is not going to like this.
“I—I fainted,” she says at last. “I’ve gone into the maternity unit for some monitoring.”
There is a long pause. Hannah can tell he is trying to keep himself in check, not overreact, make her more upset, particularly after their recent argument. She hears him swallow on the other end of the phone.
“How—is everything all right?” he says carefully. “Is the baby okay?”
“I think so,” she says. “I haven’t been signed off yet, but they keep coming in and looking at the baby’s heartbeat chart and they don’t seem too worried.”
“Good,” Will says. “Look, I can be there in…” His voice goes faint and she can tell he’s looking at his phone screen, figuring out how long the journey will take. Then he comes back on. “Twenty, twenty-five minutes?”
“I don’t know if I’ll still be here.” Hannah looks up at the clock on the wall. “When they hooked me up they said they’d monitor me for half an hour—it’s been nearly that now. Shall I call you when I know what’s happening?”
“Okay,” Will says. He sounds worried, but also like he’s trying to keep his concerns from her. “I love you, and Han—”
“Yes?”
“I’m—I’m really sorry about… you know.”
“It’s okay,” she says. For anyone else, his words might be hard to decode, but Hannah knows he means their fight. She bites her lip. She wishes Will were here. “This isn’t your fault, I promise.”
“Okay,” he says, though he doesn’t sound completely convinced. “Love you.”
“Love you too.”
She hangs up. November has moved away, trying to give at least the illusion of privacy, but now she turns around, looking over her shoulder.
“Everything okay?”
“I think so.”
There is a rattle at the door and a tall, smiling obstetrician comes in, holding a clipboard.
“Hannah de Chastaigne?”
“Yes,” Hannah says. She struggles to sit up straighter in the padded chair, the plastic creaking. “Yes, that’s me.”
“Excellent. Could we have a moment?” She looks at November, though it’s not clear whether she’s inviting her to leave or stay.
“I’ll be in the corridor, Hannah,” November says tactfully. She picks up her bag and slips out.
The doctor takes November’s stool and begins to look through Hannah’s notes and at the readout on the monitor.
“Well,” she says at last. “I hear you had a little fainting spell.”
Hannah nods. “I think I just—I don’t know, I’d had a bit of a shock, low blood pressure probably. I feel fine now.”
“Well, the good news is you look fine, and so does baby, all the vitals are really good, and your urine is clear, but… we do want to keep an eye on your blood pressure.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, it’s been creeping up a bit over the last few appointments, and I’m afraid it’s a bit higher than we’d like.”
“What? But I don’t understand—the doctor at the hotel said low blood pressure was what makes people faint.”
“It can be, but yours isn’t very low, I’m afraid. I understand it’s been up at the last couple of checks?”
