I wanted to scream that first day. I was only allowed to visit Evan for minutes at a time in the NICU, then it was back to my own hospital room, where I would lie on my side, my traitorous stomach pooled beside me. Nurses brought me medications. The lactation consultant taught me how to operate the breast pump. I was supposed to sleep, focus on recuperating. Mostly I lay in the dark and reviewed the past thirty weeks in my mind over and over again. Was it the sip of champagne I’d had at New Year’s? Maybe the fumes from the paint I’d selected for the nursery? Where had I failed? If I could just identify the moment, then go back in time …

Michael journeyed between the NICU and my room, an ashen-faced man uncertain of who needed him most, his fresh-out-of-surgery wife or his barely breathing son. He didn’t speak. He didn’t weep. He just moved, ten minutes in this room, ten minutes in that room, as if movement would keep the situation under control. His dark hair started to gray overnight. His strong shoulders seemed to stoop. But he kept walking, room to room, ward to ward, a man on a mission.

I thought Evan would sleep round the clock. All energy conserved for growing, but inevitably, as nurses adjusted his IV or feeding tube, Evan would wake up, staring at us wide-eyed, as if trying to absorb everything about this strange new world.

“He’s a fighter,” the nurses would say, chuckling over his waving fists even as he blocked their movements. “That’s a good sign, honey. He’s a tough one.”

And he would kick his thin little legs, as if in agreement.

Eventually, I was allowed to touch his cheek. Then one day I finally got to cradle him against my chest, Michael standing beside me, his hand gripping my shoulder so tight it hurt.

Evan opened his eyes again. He stared at both of us, eyes so round in his tiny, wizened head.

And we did what parents do in the NICU.

We promised everything—our grand house, our designer clothes, our self-absorbed careers. We promised it all. Our very lives. We would give up every single piece of ourselves. We would do whatever had to be done, we would lose whatever had to be lost.

If only our son would live.

I can’t find the knife. I’ve searched around the ficus tree, along the floorboards, between the folds of the shredded curtains. I take up sofa cushions, peer into every nook and cranny of the entertainment system. I beam my flashlight under furniture and over cabinets. I know Evan’s favorite places. The knife’s not in any of them.

He has it. I know he has it.

He’s outsmarted me.