i got the call just before deb had gone to safeway. took it in the den because it was coming from chicago…a friend of mine, at the home office, a guy from school actually, with a tip. a tip he’d heard that day and wanted to call me with it…it was me. i was the one that would make up the four, and he was so sorry and all that—he’s a really good guy, i see him whenever i’m in chicago, we were these really big jokers when we were at school, in the dorms together and so he was just doing what any guy would do, he said, letting me hear it from a friendly voice, and giving me a jump, the weekend, anyway, before he hung up he said again it was just what was going around, but he thought i should know… (BEAT) i couldn’t even look at deb as she was going out to the van. she called out to me, told me to crawl in and get a little snooze before the kids got home and they’d be right back…but i just waved to her. couldn’t look, you know, not right then, just waved my hand, i was too busy looking around the house, at our things, i mean, all the things we’d gathered in ten years together, and at the house itself and, well, just all of it…what was i gonna do? how could i possibly keep it all going, the lifestyle we’d made for ourselves, without my seniority, the benefit package…jobs all over being tight like they are? it just wouldn’t be possible… (BEAT) it was like the moment in that film kramer vs. kramer, you know, where he decides he’s got to get a job that day, right? i felt like that…i keep bringing up movies and tv and i don’t mean to, because we really don’t watch all that much, but there is some good programming out there, and that was an especially moving one, i thought, the way he fought that battle with his wife over the child and…but i’m standing there, just taking in the vcr, and our big screen tv and one of the kid’s bikes, i can see through the front window, the pathfinder, wheel of fortune’s blasting on the tv. in the family room…all these thoughts are swirling around in my head. and i hear it. (BEAT) i wasn’t asleep…i couldn’t of been, i mean, i’ve tried to believe it, make myself believe it, too, but i wasn’t, or i never would’ve heard her. the baby, emma, in the other room. as i was standing there i heard her cry out from inside the bedroom. i did… (BEAT) when i got to the doorway she was already under the blankets, she was, i swear, under them and fighting to get out. it’s just reflexes, i guess, because she wasn’t big enough to do anything about it, i mean, she’d just started to crawl a few weeks before that, and she was tiny for her age, the doctors said that…but she’d managed to get herself down under that comforter, i rushed in there, to the edge of the carpet at the bedroom door and then, i don’t know, something stopped me. just stopped me like some invisible force had reached out and took hold of the back of my shirt and yanked me to a halt…i looked in at her again, this little yelp kind of coming up from her as she blundered around in there…it almost looked like when your puppy, as a kid, or the family cat, you know, would get put under the blankets for a laugh, it was like that. almost, this little…mound… wandering around in there, it was nearly absurd,˜ to walk in on something like this, i mean, you just could never be ready for a thing like that, and because of that, that specific part of it, the unreality…i was able to make the decision, in that moment, standing there watching my daughter fight for her life, i made my decision, this is very hard to…anyway, remember i said i hated to waste things? well, when i looked at it, i mean, rationally, for even half-a-second there in the hallway, i realized that’s what this was. an opportunity, and i wasn’t going to waste it… (BEAT) so i—i’m just gonna say this, because it’s a little…so, i went into the room and stood there by the bed, i stood there and pulled up the comforter by one corner and i saw her then. her little fine sandy hair and her…i just kind of coaxed her down a bit. down a bit further with the edge of my foot, turned her a touch and down and then i dropped the covers back and walked out…there was one last little sound emma made, you could barely hear it. but i just kept walking, back out to the loveseat, there in the family room, and layed down and made myself go to sleep, put a pillow over my head so i couldn’t hear…and drifted off. (BEAT) the point i wanna make, though, see, is that it didn’t have to happen that way. i took the risk, this calculated risk for my family that this whole episode would play out in our favor, give me that little edge at work and maybe things’d be okay, or they’d change their minds because of, you know…but it didn’t have to be like that. if deb had just hurried a bit, if she hadn’t stop to look through people magazine or her mother hadn’t gone next door to fill a prescription, then who knows? maybe they would’ve got back in time and emma would still be…that sounds strange, doesn’t it, that way of thinking? but all i’m saying is, it was fate that took her, just the whimsy of a lingering red light or a prolonged chat with one of our neighbors in the produce aisle or if i hadn’t heard her cry out in the first place, i mean, i could’ve gotten into bed there beside her, i was planning to, i might’ve fallen asleep and never even heard her. then…who knows? it probably would’ve happened anyway, and it did happen, and so you go on. like i said before, you just go on…