Oh god, he thought. Oh please god. Let the baby be okay. Meg would never get over losing the baby.

Colin wasn’t sure he could, either, but he knew it would destroy his wife.

As he tore down his mother’s street and came to a skidding stop in front of her house, all Colin could picture was Meg in the bathroom, sobbing, blood on the floor.

Not the baby. Not the baby. Not the baby.

That was all he could ask.

Up the sidewalk. Hurdled the three steps to the porch. The door was unlocked and he burst through it.

And there was Meg.

Right at the bottom of the stairs, boxes spilled next to her body. Those fucking empty Tupperware containers, a plastic red lid next to her face.

Colin knew his wife was dead the moment he saw her face. Her contorted body. He’d seen a lot of death in his life, death that came in just about every form it could. He knew what a person looked like once all life had evaporated, and Meg was that person now.

Eyes half open, glazed. Hair spilled like cream cola on the hardwood floor. Chest down, right arm awkwardly splayed, lower torso at an angle that just shouldn’t be. Everything Colin had learned about death was on display right there, on the floor of his mother’s house, the house Colin had grown up in, embodied in the woman who had been his anchor, and now no one would be able to stop Colin from drifting out to sea.

Colin broke in that moment. Broke so much he couldn’t even comprehend how many pieces to him there were. He collapsed next to Meg on the floor, his blood pumping so violently within, thinking if he could only give his heat to her, bring her back, if only she could absorb him. Distantly aware of his mother, broken in her own way, saying how Meg had tripped and fallen, so sudden. Tripped on a silly box of empty Tupperware, a container holding more containers, and was that ironic or just stupid for such a thing to cause a fall. As she told Colin of his wife’s death, his mother picked up the Tupperware and placed the containers on a nearby heap of magazines, too late to do any good.

Colin was aware how cold Meg was, that she must have been dead for some time, and why didn’t his mother call for help earlier? He heard himself shouting the baby the baby and how maybe their child was still alive, kicking, gasping, and clutching to the death around it, like a young child suffocating inside a dry-cleaning bag. Colin saw his hand reach for Meg’s phone on the first riser of the staircase, and as that finger dialed 911, he heard the sirens outside.

Of all the times he’d responded to an emergency over his career, of all the control he had to exude as he walked into the tragedies of others, Colin, in that moment, did indeed drift away, yielding all responsibility, all control. There was a sickening relief to it, not to be in charge, and trusting others to sweep in and manage the scene. Maybe time would pass and he’d come out of his fugue and be told everything was fine. The baby was fine. Meg was fine. Looked worse than it was.