By one in the morning, I had stopped looking at the clock because every minute seemed to ask more of my body than it could give. Leo had been unsettled for hours, drawing his knees toward his stomach and crying with an intensity that frightened me. I had offered him milk, checked his diaper, held him upright against my shoulder, and walked the length of the living room in slow, careful steps. Nothing soothed him for more than a few minutes. The house smelled of formula, damp cotton, and the faint metallic odor I was trying not to identify.
I had spoken to a nurse from the maternity ward earlier that evening, describing my pain and the bleeding. She had told me to seek urgent medical assessment if the bleeding increased, if I became faint, or if the incision appeared to be opening. I should have acted then. Instead, I had looked toward the staircase, listened to Emily moving in her room, and tried to imagine how I would manage a hospital visit with two children and no one to accompany us. Every practical question seemed to lead back to the same missing person.
Mark had not answered any of my messages. I had sent him one photograph of Leo crying, followed by a short note explaining that I was getting worse. Both messages showed as delivered. His silence might have been easier to understand if he had been trapped in a meeting or driving through an area without reception. But he was attending his own party in a luxury hotel, surrounded by colleagues, music, and people who could presumably have survived without him for a few minutes.
I warmed another bottle and tested the milk against my wrist. Leo turned his head away when I offered it, arching his back and letting out a thin, exhausted shriek. I sat down with him, holding him carefully across my forearm as the nurse had demonstrated. My stomach throbbed beneath the surgical dressing. I tried humming the tune I used to sing to Emily when she was a baby, but halfway through the second verse my voice broke.
“It's all right,” I whispered into Leo's soft hair. “I'm here.”
I wasn't certain whether I meant the words for him or for myself. He was so small that his entire hand could curl around one of my fingers. In the hospital, when the doctor placed him beside my cheek, I had been overwhelmed by the knowledge that he had arrived safely after a terrifying delivery. Now his cries filled a room where I could barely stand, and I felt a guilt so fierce that I almost resented myself for feeling it. He wasn't asking for anything unreasonable. He was hungry, uncomfortable, and six days old.
A creak sounded overhead. Then a small voice drifted down the staircase.
“Mommy?”
I looked toward the landing. Emily stood beneath the hallway light, holding the old rabbit she had slept with since she was a toddler. Its ears hung unevenly, one stitched together where she had once pulled too hard. Her pajamas were wrinkled, and her face had a pale, pinched look I had not seen at bedtime.
“What's wrong, sweetheart?”
“My tummy hurts.”
“Did you eat something?”
She shook her head and pressed one hand over her stomach. “I got sick on the carpet. I'm sorry.”
The apology hurt more than anything else she could have said. Emily was standing alone upstairs, feeling ill, and her first concern was whether she had made a mess. I wanted to cross the distance between us and take her into my arms. Instead, I had to sit still for a moment while a wave of dizziness passed.
“You don't need to be sorry,” I told her. “Stay by the railing. I'll come and help you.”
She nodded obediently. In the soft hallway light, she looked impossibly small. I glanced toward the basket where I kept the children's basic supplies. The medicine she had sometimes been given for stomach discomfort was upstairs in our bathroom, alongside Leo's infant medication. I knew that if either child's symptoms became serious, medicine would not replace professional care, but at that moment I was simply trying to manage the next few minutes.
I stood with Leo held against my chest. My legs were unsteady, and I had to wait beside the sofa until the black flecks moving at the edges of my sight cleared. Emily watched silently from above. I didn't want her to see how frightened I had become, so I tried to smile.
“Mommy's moving slowly tonight,” I said.
“Because the doctor cut your tummy?”
“Yes, darling.”
“Did Daddy forget?”
I couldn't answer immediately. Mark had known about the surgery. He had been present when the doctor explained that my recovery would require help and rest. He had heard me crying in the bathroom when I first tried to stand without assistance. Forgetting would have been a mercy compared with what he had actually done.
“Daddy's away tonight,” I said at last. “I'm going to take care of you.”
Emily hugged her rabbit closer. “I wish Grandpa was here.”
The words stayed with me as I moved toward the stairs. Arthur Harrison lived on a vast estate outside the city, surrounded by high walls and meticulously kept grounds. He was not a man anyone contacted casually in the middle of the night. He expected punctuality, composure, and the sort of independence that could survive almost anything. I had never been entirely comfortable around him. Even so, he had always treated Emily with an attentiveness that surprised me.
The last time Arthur visited, he had noticed how carefully she arranged her crayons by color. He sat at the kitchen table for almost an hour while she drew him a picture of a house with a purple roof. When she gave it to him, he folded it neatly and placed it inside his briefcase as though it were an important contract. She had adored him ever since. I thought of calling him, then hesitated because I could hear Mark's voice in my memory, accusing me of making family matters unnecessarily dramatic.
I reached the bottom of the staircase and wrapped my free hand around the banister. The wood felt cool and solid. Leo had quieted momentarily, his cheek resting against me, and I adjusted my grip to support his head. Emily crouched on the landing, watching my progress with a solemn expression.
“One step at a time,” I murmured.
I placed my foot on the first stair and shifted my weight upward. A fierce pain tore through the lower part of my abdomen. It was unlike the soreness I had been managing since surgery. Something seemed to pull sharply beneath the dressing, and the force of it stole my breath. I tried to tighten my grip on the railing, but my hand slipped as dizziness rushed over me.
The staircase tilted.
I remember making one immediate decision. Whatever happened, I could not let Leo strike the floor. I turned my shoulder inward, curling around his little body as my knees gave way. I fell backward from the first step, landing hard on my side at the foot of the stairs. The impact knocked the air from my chest. For several seconds I could hear nothing except a distant ringing in my ears.
Then Leo began screaming.
I lay on the hardwood, clutching him against me, unable to draw a full breath. Pain spread from my shoulder through my back and into the tender area beneath my stitches. I tried to move my legs, but a rush of nausea pinned me where I was. A terrible warmth began spreading across the front of my clothes.
“Mommy?”
Emily's voice came from above, thin with disbelief.
“Stay there,” I tried to say. The words barely emerged.
She came down anyway, bare feet striking the stairs in hurried little steps. I watched her through blurred vision, helpless to stop her. She dropped to her knees beside me, her rabbit falling onto the floor. Her eyes moved from my face to the blood gathering beneath my clothing, and she let out a small, bewildered cry.
“Mommy, you're hurt.”
“I know, sweetheart.”
“Are you going to die?”
The question seemed to open something inside me. I wanted to promise that I would not. I wanted to tell her I would be standing again in a moment, that I would clean her rug and bring her a glass of water, that tomorrow we would laugh about a frightening night. But I could feel the wet fabric against my skin and the alarming weakness in my limbs. I knew better than to make a promise I could no longer control.
“I'm going to call for help,” I whispered. “Stay beside me.”
I managed to reach my phone. The screen illuminated my hand, revealing blood on my fingers. I found Mark's contact and pressed the call button. Emily watched the little circle turn as the connection went through. The telephone rang several times before his recorded greeting began. I ended the call and tried again.
Nothing.
“Is Daddy coming?” Emily asked.
“I'm trying to reach him.”
I dialed a third time. Leo squirmed against my chest, his cries weakening into frightened little bursts. I shifted him cautiously, checking his face and breathing as well as I could. Emily took the discarded towel from the floor and held it near my stomach, imitating what she had seen me do earlier.
“Will this help?” she asked.
I nodded because I couldn't trust my voice.
Over the next half hour, I called Mark again and again. Each unanswered call made the room seem colder. I left messages at first, asking him to come home immediately. Then I stopped trying to explain and simply told him I was bleeding, that I had fallen, that the children were with me. Eventually, all I could manage was pressing his name whenever the previous call ended.
I counted twenty attempts.
Twenty times, the phone rang without reaching him.
My thumb was hovering over the emergency-call screen when a notification appeared. Someone had tagged Mark in a video on Instagram. For a moment, I ignored it. Then I noticed the name of the hotel and opened the notification, driven by a terrible need to see exactly what had mattered more than our safety.
The screen filled with music and movement. Bright lights swept across an extravagant suite. Guests stood around a crowded bar, laughing and raising glasses. Beyond them, enormous windows showed the city glittering below. A camera moved past a DJ booth and a table covered in expensive champagne bottles before turning toward a white sofa.
Mark was standing on it.
He looked exhilarated, nothing like the weary man who had complained about needing a break from our children. A bottle of champagne rested in one hand. His other arm held a woman close at the waist. She wore a shimmering silver dress with an open back, and she leaned against him with an intimacy that was impossible to mistake. He laughed toward the camera, then lowered his face toward hers.
I watched the brief video twice. The first time, I noticed his hand against her body. The second, I noticed the expression on his face. It was the look he used to give me when we were newly married, before he began treating affection as an interruption. Underneath the post, he had written a cheerful comment celebrating the pleasure of an evening without crying children.
I stared at those words while our own children cried beside me.
Emily tugged gently at my sleeve. “Mommy, who's that lady with Daddy?”
I turned the screen away. I had no strength to explain adultery to a child who was still trying to understand why blood was coming through her mother's clothes. I wanted to tell her that none of what she had seen was her responsibility, that adults made choices for reasons children could not control. But darkness kept gathering at the edge of my vision, and I could scarcely keep my eyes open.
My phone slid from my hand and struck the floor.
I heard Emily calling my name. She pressed her little palms against my shoulder and tried to help me sit up, but I could no longer coordinate my movements. Leo's warmth remained against my chest. I concentrated on holding him securely as the room faded into a blur of shadows and distant sounds.
“Please don't leave me,” Emily whispered.
I tried to answer. My lips moved, but no sound came out.
At some point, she curled beside me, laying her head against my back. I felt her tears dampen my shirt. She was still wearing the rabbit's loose ribbon around one wrist, and her fingers tightened in the fabric as though she could hold me in the world by refusing to let go.
The last thing I remember was the phone lying beyond my reach, its screen dark, and the awful realization that if nobody came through the door, both my children would be waiting beside me when morning arrived.
