I found a box and a hand-towel and made a bed for him. I cupped my hands around his tiny bird body and was surprised that his feet would not move. I tried to pull at him again, gently, and finally the bird gave in to me. I laid him down on the towel, tucked him in, and took him inside. It was one thing to feed a bird and another to become responsible for its life, or snuffing it out.

Outside, in the dusk light, the hummingbird’s feathers were a dirty brown, but inside each feather shimmered a brilliant magenta and teal. I tried to quantify the size of each feather, anticipating one day telling the story at a dinner party of how I played death doula to a bird, and couldn’t find an appropriate equivalent. Smaller than a snowflake? What would sound good in the retelling? Why had I immediately assumed it to be “he”? I had read that male birds always had superior plumage to females, in order to attract. Males held the power and the beauty.

The name of the woman on the phone was Helen, and I kept saying things like “That’s terrible to hear, Helen,” and “Are you sure he won’t survive, Helen?” and “Oh, that sounds awful, Helen.” I wondered if she thought I had made the bird sick—if she was silently judging me during the call. I worried that I was the cause of his suffering. Helen told me if I was calling her I cared enough to have not been the cause.

She hoped that I cared enough to kill it.

Helen told me to crush up an anti-inflammatory pill and mix it with the simple syrup I made each day for the mass of hummingbirds that would migrate to our feeders. She said to mix in one crushed tablet of my anxiety medication, to let the hummingbird go to sleep. She told me it would be okay, that doing this would not make me a bad person. To make me feel better, she kept saying it was going to die anyway. I found my bottle of Xanax at the bottom of my purse, took one myself, and broke another half pill to crush up and mix with the syrup. I found an eyedropper and took all the steps Helen advised.

The bird did not die right away.

I spent hours with him, dropping the mixture onto his tongue, hoping he would take the sip that would finally dull his pain. The agony was in the waiting. At one point, his feathers stopped shivering with iridescent light. His eyes opened and I hoped he saw me trying to help. I refilled the dropper over and over and finally watched the bird lie down on his side, tucked into the seams of the towel, and breathe easier. Convulse less.