These are not our sheets. Ours smell of softener and Sundays. These sheets are starched. This is not the right Sunday.
I feel no heat, no chest hair, no heartbeat. My other cheek feels cold. The chill sneaks under the covers. These are not our covers. I should just keep my eyes shut. Some light filters through. I should just keep my mind on last Sunday.
Last Sunday, light flitted up and down the ridges of the covers, up your neck, onto your face. I tapped on the birthmarks, inventing constellations. You wouldn’t wake up, so I played the piano on your cheek. Then I kissed your nose, then I just brushed the ridge underneath and you sneezed and were furious and I really was sorry, but Hadi, I was so hungry.
My stomach hurts. Last Sunday, I wished aloud for croissants. I promised coffee, the thickest, sweetest coffee you had ever tasted. I mentioned the baby, shamelessly. I kissed and cajoled till you knocked the covers off and stood just to be away from me.
The bed always turns cold the instant you leave. This bed is cold. It’s not ours, and you’re not here.
Last Sunday unravels. It frays and splays in my mind. Your mother called while you were at the bakery. Everything went cold then. The coffee, the promised croissants, left to harden in the bag, on the floor by the door where you dropped them, still there hours later, when you left. I can’t catch the thoughts. They run from me in every direction. Light strains through my eyelashes. This is not our bed. I should just turn on my stomach and un-wake. My stomach hurts. Why does my…
“Ms. Zayat, please stop screaming! Calm down!”
My limbs disobey, thrash, knocking against the nurse, the plastic railing on the bed. Contact sends me screaming louder. Electricity shoots up and down my body, peaking in the soft, horrifying sac of skin where—
“Where is my son?!”
“I have your painkillers! Hold still so I can work your IV!”
But I cannot. My eyes are wide open now, and the bed, the room, my body are devastatingly empty.
“Where is my baby?!”
“Ms. Zayat, please keep still. The doctors are on their way.”
I sob. I scream. I fight the nurse and her needle. Liquid fire through the IV. Heat, pain sears my lacerated uterus, my manic heart, my brain, fighting to absorb shock after shock.
“Where is my husband? Has he called? My baby!”
A door bursting open. Cold air rushes in from the corridor. A man’s voice:
“Ms. Zayat!”
I know that voice. Yesterday floods the room. Every second of yesterday fills every crevice. I drown. Thoughts and limbs flail. A hand grabs my shoulder. Another locks me in position.
“Ms. Zayat. I need you to breathe. Again! Through the nose, out the mouth.”
I cough and sputter. My nose is blocked, my lungs overflowing, but the voice and grip urge me on, relentless. The spasms subside.
Slowly, the hands withdraw. The room clears. There is no bassinet.
“My son.”
The words come out a rasp.
“He’s all right, Ms. Zayat.”
Another voice. Another woman. She steps out of a row of white coats and a uniform look of sympathy. Her hair is dyed an aggressive blond and her features are hard, but the eyes and voice are soft.
“I’m Dr. Farber, chief of neonatology. This is Dr. Scott. He and his team delivered your son.”
Tall, pale, shiny blond hair streaked with reddish lowlights. He must be my age.
“How are you feeling, Ms. Zayat?”
“Please, where is my baby? Please, why isn’t he here? And my husband—”
“Someone is trying to reach him,” Dr. Farber interjects, “and your baby is in the neonatal intensive care unit.”
She can only be a few years older than me, but the cut of her jaw is so severe she looks older. The bags under her eyes cast shadows down her cheeks. Her lipstick, too, is tired and cracked.
“Ms. Zayat, as you know, you went into labor early. Quite early: twenty-eight weeks. That’s about three months too soon. Babies born at that stage do not have good chances of survival.”
The room floods with ice water.
“You said—”
“Yes, I did.”
She forces calm on us both.
“Your baby is in the NICU. We were able to stabilize him and transfer him to an incubator. Our priorities are breathing—”
“He can’t breathe?!”
“He’s on a respirator. His lungs are still too underdeveloped to work on their own.”
Underdeveloped. Too small. A mask on a face, too small. My own lungs swell and burn.
“The machine takes some of the strain off. We’re also giving him doses of surfactant. That’s so the lungs don’t collapse.”
Collapse, like my heart into talcum and cinder as she goes through her list of hemoglobin levels, electrolytes, glucose, two units of blood on standby, “inserted a catheter into his stomach.”
My heart and I dissolve into convulsive sobs. Everyone else is silent.
“Is he in pain?”
I have to know.
“We are doing all we can.”
“What does that mean?! I want to see him!”
“It would be better to wait…”
I can’t wait, I can’t breathe. What happened to the air?