He looked into my eyes and finally seemed to get it.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

It was late. Wall Street was dead. Miraculously, a cab appeared. We told the driver to take us to the closest hospital, which was NYU Downtown, on William Street. It was less than a half mile away, but getting there felt like an eternity. I saw the buildings arcing in on top of us the entire drive, as if we were passing through a giant tunnel in slow motion.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” Robert said, but I could see he was worried now, too.

At the hospital, I handed over my student ID and insurance card from the University of Texas. I’d graduated in May. I was pretty sure the insurance had expired, but that was all I had. I was sure I was about to collapse in full cardiac arrest on the hard, industrial tile floor of that ER and suffer the embarrassment of making a scene in front of Robert. Somehow I was more worried about making a fool of myself in front of him than I was about possibly dying.

The person at the desk took one look at me, wrote down the information, and didn’t ask any questions. The nurses hurried me in and hooked me up to a dozen monitors. One of them handed me an aspirin to dissolve under my tongue while another drew blood and began a long list of routine questions. “Are you on any medicine?” “No.” “Any chance of you being pregnant?” “No.”

Robert looked at me. “You don’t want to take a pregnancy test to be sure?” he asked.

I shook my head emphatically. “No!”

When the nurses left I shot him the side-eye. “What the hell, Robert?” I said, my voice muffled by a plastic oxygen mask. “Why would you say that?”

“Well, what if you are?”

“How can I be pregnant, Robert? We aren’t even having sex!”