Chapter 36: Room Enough

The medical assistant took Su's temperature twice and wrote both numbers down without asking which one was possible. Evan sat beside the examination table with his hands between his knees. He had counted the ceiling tiles twice. Twenty-four, and a sprinkler head in the corner. The obstetrician Marisol had found for them came in with a tablet under one arm. Su's history filled the screen: realgar exposure, severe hypothermia, cardiac arrest at close range, unstable temperature regulation, a pregnancy after an event nobody had data for. "If I don't understand a fact, I'll chart that I don't understand it," she said. "I won't swap in a better-behaved one." Some of the stiffness left Su's shoulders. She raised her cardigan herself. The first touch of gel made her abdomen contract. Three scales lifted at her right hip, white at the edges. The obstetrician paused the probe. "Does that hurt?" "The gel…