I only came in because I was looking for Yvette. She had been moved to another place during the night and I wanted to ask somebody where I should go. That’s how I knew that I had fallen into a doze, because I didn’t see them move her.

There was a table made of metal, probably steel, and it was shining and clean except for a towel laid out upon it. The towel bore a few blotches of blood, the blood rose-pink, spreading, as if it had been diluted with another fluid. On the towel a tiny baby girl lay on her back, naked, arms flung out, legs akimbo, her head rolled slightly to one side so that her chin pointed down toward her collarbone.

Her skull was a shape I had not seen before, her forehead sloping back into a shallow cone. The hair on her head, slicked into furrows of small regular curls, reminded me of the fleece of a newborn lamb. Her mouth was open in an O, her lips the dark red of early blackberries. The color was sharp-cut against the gray of her face. In the side of her chest was a large soft-looking depression as if a rubber ball the size of a grapefruit had been pressed against her ribs. Her umbilicus was dark, swollen, clamped. Shallow, wrinkled blisters, varying in size from a sixpence to an egg and filled with a watery ochre fluid, covered her forehead, chest and the tops of her legs. Her entire body was smothered with streaks of viscous bloody material and also with a strange greenish-brown liquor. Her hands lay palm-up, the fingers slightly curled. Her fingernails were the same color as her lips. Her feet were the only part of her that resembled any other human being I had seen. They were narrow, the toes neat, Yvette’s in miniature.

Although it takes a moment or two to describe, I saw all of her very quickly. Really, in an instant.

At the far end of the table, two midwives were standing over her. The older midwife was talking to the younger. “This is Baby Acton,” she was saying. “Died in the womb and mother didn’t realize.” She put a hand on the younger midwife’s arm. “Take a good look, dear, you want to be prepared. You can see by the state of her skin that the waters broke some time ago. Happened in the bath, I expect, or her mother might have noticed. Oh, dear, quite a dent on her side, she probably got that coming out. The bones are so soft. You can see by the head. Already engaged, that’s why the peculiar shape.”

“She looks like she’s wearing lipstick,” murmured the younger midwife, now whey-faced.