Lucky for us, we are in a hospital, so she is given a sedative and a place to lie down, and then it’s just me left to wander the lonely halls back and forth between my mother and my sister, down past the endless series of doors. I decide to sit in my sister’s empty room, and what must be an hour passes as I wait for them to wheel her back. I look at the cold tile floor and the mirrored window that turns the falling dusk into a shadowy reflection of the room. I listen to nurses wheel the broken bodies in from down the hallway and wheel the empty gurneys back out to wherever they came from, in and out like the tide, until I can’t stand it anymore and I get up to walk up and down the hallway.

Wheels creak and roll across the glossy tile floor. I can’t remember what room I came from. All the doors are closed, and I cannot open them. I hurry back down the hall, toward the grinding wheels, just as a male nurse pushes a gurney into an open doorway, and there it is, the room, and there is Elizabeth, being moved to her bed.

The doctor follows shortly after, a stony-faced woman with her hair pulled back tight against her scalp. She offers her hand for a perfunctory shake and says I must be the sister.

“I suppose I must be,” I say. “So what happened?”

“At first we assumed it was a placental abruption due to the pain and bleeding,” she explains, “in which case, we would have performed an emergency cesarean. However,” she continues, “that wasn’t the case. The bleeding’s stopped, and she’s doing well. To be honest, there’s nothing wrong with her.”

“So … that’s it?”

“That’s it,” she says with a shrug. “Just one of those things.”

“Just one of those things.”

“The body is a magnificent and mysterious thing.” At last she smiles thinly. “Sometimes it does things we can’t explain. But your sister is healthy, and everything looks good. This was just a minor fluke.”

“What about Julian?” I ask.

“I’m sorry?”

“The baby.”

She nods. “The baby is in good health. No problems, which is why we didn’t induce. Better to let him come when he’s ready. Now, we gave Elizabeth a little something, but I think she’s mainly just exhausted from the ordeal, so we should let her get some rest. We’ll keep her overnight for observation, and tomorrow, barring any complications, she should be able to go home.” The smile returns, just slightly. “Good news, right?”

Good news, certainly, but why doesn’t it feel like good news? Why does it feel like Julian is lurking in there, biding his time, waiting to burst free?

12

Like lonely islands in the darkness, streetlamps crawl past as I drive us home, spread out enough that their pools of light never touch. My mother in the passenger seat is partly dozing, groggy and dulled from the sedative. The darkness is broken; the silence, now, too.