It happened at two in the afternoon on a Tuesday, which Sera later said was deeply unfair because she had been expecting drama and instead got the most unremarkable possible timing.
I was mid-shift when my phone rang.
Draven.
Not the composed Draven. Not even the boarding-house-afraid Draven from the haematoma scare.
This was a new register entirely.
"Her water broke," he said. The words came out fast, slightly too loud, the voice of a man whose carefully constructed thirty-seven-entry spreadsheet had not prepared him for the actual sensory reality of the event. "She's having contractions. We're in the car. We're coming to you."
"How far apart are the contractions?" I said, already moving toward the nurse's station.
"I don't—" He stopped. I heard Sera's voice in the background, muff
