“Claire’s baby was born very sick.”
My knees weakened.
I sat down.
The hospital room returned to me.
The harsh lights.
Nurses moving quickly.
Someone telling me there was a problem.
Then anesthesia.
Then waking hours later with Tyler beside me.
Except—
No.
Not Tyler.
I had known Tyler socially by then, but we had only begun dating months after Mason’s birth.
Hadn’t we?
My memories suddenly seemed covered in fog.
A nurse had brought Mason to me later that morning.
I remembered asking why he looked different.
Did I?
My chest tightened.
I remembered a nurse telling me newborn swelling changed quickly.
Or had my mother told me that years later?
Memory is strange.
When you trust your life, you don’t interrogate every detail.
You simply live inside it.
“What happened to my baby?”
her face.
Not anger.
Fear.
“Tyler,” she whispered. “What happened?”
He took a long breath.
“Claire’s baby was born very sick.”
My knees weakened.
I sat down.
The hospital room returned to me.
The harsh lights.
Nurses moving quickly.
Someone telling me there was a problem.
Then anesthesia.
Then waking hours later with Tyler beside me.
Except—
No.
Not Tyler.
I had known Tyler socially by then, but we had only begun dating months after Mason’s birth.
Hadn’t we?
My memories suddenly seemed covered in fog.
A nurse had brought Mason to me later that morning.
I remembered asking why he looked different.
Did I?
My chest tightened.
I remembered a nurse telling me newborn swelling changed quickly.
Or had my mother told me that years later?
Memory is strange.
When you trust your life, you don’t interrogate every detail.
You simply live inside it.
“What happened to my baby?”
been almost two.
Tyler had known for more than five years.
Five years of birthday candles.
Christmas mornings.
Family vacations.
School pictures.
Five years of telling Mason stories about the day he was born.
Five years of letting me believe that I had given birth to him.
Five years of knowing another woman thought her child was dead.
