“Babe,” Shawn says when he hangs up the phone. “Thank god you’re here.” He kisses her on the forehead. It’s a distracted kiss, something he does by rote. Then he sees the plant in her hand. “What is that?”

“A ficus, maybe?” says Katriina. “I just thought it would be nice. For Kate’s room.”

Shawn sighs deeply, the way he does when he wants to make it clear to everyone around him that he is carrying the weight of the world. “She’s in a coma. I’m not sure she needs a houseplant. And what’s this, a card?”

“Yes. I bought your mother a card. Because that’s what people do when people they love are in the hospital. They buy cards to show they care.”

“Okay, great,” Shawn says and walks down the hall. Before Katriina follows him, she places the ficus plant on the counter of the nurses’ station, tucked off to the side where she hopes it won’t be in the way. They’ll appreciate it more anyway. She doesn’t know what she was thinking. Kate has never had much of a green thumb.

Outside Kate’s room Katriina pauses, takes a deep breath, and positions her hand over her elastic. Aside from the births of her sons she has not spent any time in hospitals, and she is unsure what to expect – machines all over the place, things beeping and whirring, and people rushing around. But she is surprised to discover there is nothing of the sort. Kate is in the bed with a quilt pulled up to her chin, her head slightly turned to one side. A cosmetics bag on the side table tells Katriina that Nicki has, thankfully, already been by. Kate is hooked up to a heart monitor and an IV, but you could almost believe she is just having a nap if not for Shawn, who pats down his mother’s hair and wipes a line of drool from the corner of her mouth so carefully that Katriina can hardly bear it.

She snaps the elastic once, lightly enough so that Shawn won’t be able to hear it, and wonders at which point a good wife would tell her husband that she has miscarried for the third time in a row.

—

The first time Katriina had a miscarriage, she was shopping at Old Navy. She had been trying to pick out a new shirt for Shawn, unable to decide between the short-sleeve blue-and-green plaid or the short-sleeve blue-and-yellow plaid, when pain shot through her abdomen, as if her organs were being clamped into a vise. She put both shirts back on the rack and walked between the tables of graphic T-shirts and two-dollar flip-flops, bent slightly forward, muscles clenched, vision blurring as she made her way to the bathroom.