“Here,” I grabbed one of Lonnie’s green apples and shoved it at one of them, questioning my own motives as I did so. “Take it, take it.”

He waved his hands in front of me, refusing, and shut the door.

Then James and I were left alone with only the sound of Lonnie’s breath. Neither of us spoke for an uncomfortable beat. I rubbed the waxy apple skin against my palms. We both just looked at her there on the ground. I felt thankful to James for returning in time to make the decision about the hospital.

“Let’s get her into bed,” James said eventually, and we struggled together, nearly laughing from the difficulty, of getting the dead weight of her up two skinny flights of stairs. I had her ankles, those smooth bony parts, connecting her tiny limp feet to the rest of her. Her feet were cold as ice bumping into my sweaty arms as we walked.

Upstairs, we shrouded her in the white bedding, pulling it right up under her chin. James rinsed out the toothbrush cup from the bathroom and tried to get her to sip some water, but it mostly just dribbled down her chin. There was nothing to do then but sit there, the two of us on the edge of the bed, and look at her as her breathing slowly returned to normal. I was filled with the urge to go down to the freezer and pull out her frozen journal, to leaf through the cold pages right there in front of both of them, to reread the entry about William’s birth. James would never know what it was. So long as I didn’t flash her handwriting in his direction he would think it was my own notebook. But I didn’t have the guts. Instead I just sat there studying her face. Her eyelids, streaked with tiny blue veins, were finally closed, though her eyes couldn’t stop moving beneath them. Her mouth moved sometimes too, her lips parting and coming together again, still emitting an occasional guttural rasp. I expected James to tell me I could leave, but since he didn’t I assumed he liked my silent presence there next to him; he must’ve found it comforting. I guess we were both just waiting for her breathing to fully return to normal.

Finally James spoke. “She said she was at a bar? Alone?” He sounded confused and doubtful.

“Yes,” I said, though I actually couldn’t remember whether or not she’d answered that question. Then William started fussing and I went up to soothe him back to sleep. As I came out of the nursery, James cornered me in the hallway. His tie was askew, his dotted socks peeking out from under his slacks.

“Is he asleep?” he whispered.

“Yes,” I said.