I kept looking at my phone as I sat next to her on the kitchen floor, stroking her hair while she breathed in that harsh, raspy way. Her eyes never closed, though they didn’t move either, like she wasn’t really seeing whatever she was looking at. I imagined having to slide my fingertips down over her eyelids to close them, imagined her dead. For a moment I could see myself stepping into her place somehow—comforting James in his grief until he accepted me as William’s rightful mother, as his next beautiful wife. I’d never really thought very much about James until then. He was rarely home during my hours. I’d often wondered whether he was also having an affair, if her dalliance was just a response to his.

The chaos of James returning home, supposedly from a late business meeting, interrupted these fantasies as well as Lonnie’s and my private moment together. “She just passed out,” I said. “She made it home, but can’t seem to move.”

“Call 911!” James yelled at me. He grabbed my phone from my hand but then shoved it back at me when he failed to unlock the screen. “Why haven’t you called yet?”

“She just got here,” I said, my voice shaking. “This just happened.”

I didn’t know what to say to the man on the phone. “She just came in the door and passed out.”

“She’s unconscious?”

“No,” I said. “She’s conscious, but she can’t move. She’s having trouble talking.”

“Yep,” he said. “She was at a bar?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “What do you mean ‘yep’?”

“We’ll send someone out.”

When the paramedics arrived they just nodded, like they’d seen it all a million times. One shined a little light in her eyes, pulled up the lids. “Yep, they’re dilated.”

“Were you drinking? Were you at a bar?”

Lonnie didn’t answer.

They turned to me. “She was roofied. Happens all the time.”

“Does she need to go to the hospital?”

“We can’t really make that call. We’ll take her if you want, but likely, she’ll just come out of it soon. She’s still conscious so she might not have gotten a whole dose. She’ll probably be sick tomorrow though.”

James said, “No, no. She would kill me if I took her to the hospital.”

She did seem to be rejecting the idea of it, moaning in a raspy, awful way. I knew about her last experience there, for William’s birth, from her journal, but I didn’t say anything.

James signed a paper stating he was turning down further treatment and the paramedics left shortly after. I felt bad for calling them, since they really hadn’t done anything. “Can I get you something?” I asked, feeling shaky and awkward. “Coffee?”

They shook their heads, having more important places to be, of course.