He’s silent for a moment. Then, to himself, he whispers, “One more week. We can do one more week.”
I nod against him. “For your father,” I whisper.
“For our baby,” he whispers back.
“For our baby,” I agree. “And for us.”
We make love twice more before I fall asleep. The next thing I know, I’m being pulled up out of something black and dreamless by a strange cacophony.
Voices. Boots. A radio crackling below the window.
“Mat.” I shake his shoulder. “Mat, something’s happening.”
He’s awake between one breath and the next. His hand finds my wrist in the dark and squeezes once—Stay—then he’s up and at the window, lifting the heavy curtain an inch with one knuckle.
The light that comes through paints his bare chest in candy-cane stripes. Red, blue, red, blue.
“Ambulance,” he reports. “T
