She wakes up on that Tuesday morning blinking and grimacing. Her dream was bright and full of shapes, colorful and childish. Her stomach hurts. She looks down and discovers that she is immensely bloated. She stands and lifts a stolen white hotel robe from where it is collapsed over the dresser. There is a ring on the dresser. None of her clothes are in this room. She shrugs on the robe. When she ties it, the knot rests above the swell of her abdomen. She walks into the kitchen.

He is making coffee. He stares at her, open-mouthed. Coffee drips into the pot. He clutches a mug with a picture of her in white on the side. She thought she hid all of those.

“I think I ate something strange last night,” she explains, and then she throws up in the sink. The phone rings.

While he rinses her bile down the drain, sipping coffee with the other hand, she picks up the phone.

Mary, in apartment 331, has woken up larger, and wonders if her new keto diet is backfiring.

Julia, in apartment 205, says her ankles swelled to match her stomach, and could it be something in the air?

Adam, in apartment 340, asks if it is normal for his twelve-year-old to experience bloating and cramps with no blood.

Louise, in apartment 119, says that she must’ve blacked out hard on sleeping pills and had a wild time, because she peed on a stick this morning and the double lines appeared.

She hangs up the phone and runs to the bathroom.

 

He refuses to believe it’s true.

He asks her who the father is.

He says, “It’s only been four months!”

He ignores her.

He berates her.

Finally, after she coerces him into the lobby where the women have gathered, he believes her.

“Okay,” he says, “okay, okay.”

That night, she opens the door to the spare room and he says, “Wait.”

He says, “Won’t you be cold?”

He says, “The baby deserves a better bed.”

He says, “I’m sorry.”

He says, “I’ve missed you.”

She picks the ring up from the dresser and puts it on.

 

Mary is two weeks early. Julia is four days late. Adam’s daughter is a month early. Louise is one day late. She is right on time.