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The pain tightens low and hard enough that I actually gasp. My fingers clamp around the edge of the desk. Simone is out of her chair before I even look at her.

Professor Singh stops midsentence.

Half the room turns.

“Sir,” Simone says, already grabbing my bag, “I need to take her to the infirmary.”

For one second I’m mortified. Then Professor Singh looks directly at me, takes in my face, and whatever irritation he might have felt disappears.

“Go,” he says.

Simone helps me stand. I hate that she has to. I hate even more that the moment I’m upright, my knees feel unreliable enough to justify it. The hallway outside the lecture room is too bright, the fluorescent lights catching at the edges of my vision while the pain settles into something heavier and more constant.

“Tell me exactly what you’re feeling,” Simone says as we walk.

“Bossed around,” I mutter.

She doesn’t laugh. “Maggie.”

That gets my attention.

I take a breath, then another. “Cramping. Low. Worse when I move.”

“How long?”

“It started maybe ten minutes ago. Then stopped. Then came back.”

She tightens her hold on my elbow. “Okay.” She says it in the tone people use when they’re trying not to sound worried.

At the infirmary, the nurse takes one look at me and becomes brisk in that efficient way medical people do when they’ve already decided what happens next.

“How far along?” she asks.

I tell her.

“Any bleeding?”

“No.”

“Dizziness?”

“A little.”

“Pain scale?”

I almost say five, because apparently even now some part of me still wants to be agreeable.

Simone cuts in before I can. “Higher than whatever she’s about to lie and say.”

I glare weakly at her.

The nurse presses gently on my lower abdomen. My breath hitches at the pain.

“All right,” she says. “You’re going to the hospital.”

“That seems excessive,” I say.

“It isn’t.” Her tone is not unkind, just immovable.