She clung to him. She didn’t want him to go. She wanted to beg him to stay home, to call in sick, but that was never who she was. She was never needy. She was never that type of partner. He had married a strong, independent woman. Breaking down in front of him, requiring his presence on a random Tuesday, felt like a violation of their vows.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He kissed her cheek.
“Me too.”
She watched his car pull out of the driveway and then let herself completely sob. June was on a play mat on the floor, a few stuffed animals dangling from a curved bar above her head. She stared at them in wonder and then stared at her sobbing mother in wonder. Gwen knew June wouldn’t remember her mother’s emotional fragility on days like this one, not consciously, at least. But would something be imprinted upon her? Something that wired her brain to see her mother as unpredictable and dangerous? Gwen was starting to hate that she’d read so many books.
She wiped her eyes and nose on the sleeve of her sweatshirt and sat on the floor next to June.
“Mommy’s having a hard day,” she said.
June was reabsorbed in staring at the dangling stuffed giraffe. She did not care about her mother’s hard day.
Gwen tapped her phone screen to check the time. The support group was about twenty minutes away, at Virginia Mason Hospital, the same hospital where she’d had her C-section. If she wanted to actually go, and not just lie to Jeff about going, they would have to leave soon.
“You want to go on an adventure with Mommy?” she asked June.
They hardly ever left the house. For better or worse, Gwen could order almost anything they needed online. In this modern age, errands could become obsolete. When they did leave the house, Gwen felt like a bear emerging from hibernation, weak and ragged, muscles atrophied, eyes squinting in the daylight.
She strapped June into her car seat and pulled out of the garage. Throughout the drive, she peeked into the rearview mirror to see June’s face reflected in the little mirror attached to the back of her rear-facing car seat. Whenever June was quiet, Gwen feared she’d stopped breathing suddenly. The night before, she’d googledCan babies choke on their own saliva?Since her own medical drama, she’d felt vulnerable to tragedy in a way she never had before.
When they approached the hospital parking lot, Gwen’s palms got so sweaty that she had to take them off the steering wheel one at a time and wipe them on her sweatpants. It hadn’t occurred to her that it might be difficult to return to the hospital for the first time since her surgeries. She wasn’t the type to be soaffectedby things. But there was no denying that her body was on the verge of a panic attack while her brain was confused about what was transpiring.
She pulled into a spot at the far end of the parking lot, mostly because she didn’t trust herself to navigate the more crowded area closer to the entrance. When she put the car in park, she willed herself to take deep breaths but felt like her lungs were the size of chicken eggs.
“Mommy’s okay,” she told June.
Not that June seemed to notice anything was amiss. Gwen’s only witness in this new life was completely oblivious.
After ten minutes of jagged breathing, Gwen opened her car door with a shaky hand, then went to get June out of her car seat. The weight of the baby in her arms was a comfort. She thought of those dogs wearing weighted vests in thunderstorms.
Thankfully, the entrance they used wasn’t the same entrance as the one Jeff had taken her through on that horrific day. She speed walked down a quiet hallway in search of the right room. They were a fewminutes late, so there was no gathering of people outside a room to alert her to the right location.
When she found it, she peeked inside to see about fifteen women sitting in a circle of chairs, their babies either in their arms, in car seats next to them, or on floor mats in front of them.
“Are you looking for the moms’ group?” a woman asked, seeing Gwen before Gwen could decide if she wanted to be seen.
“Um, yeah,” Gwen said, taking a tentative step inside.
The woman stood. She was clearly the leader of the group. Gwen had probably emailed back and forth with her during her pregnancy, when she was making arrangements to attend the group. She couldn’t remember the woman’s name to save her life, though. It was like her brain had moved so many things to the recycle bin when June came along, then permanently deleted the files.
“Well, come on in,” she said. “We’re just getting started.”
The leader woman pulled a chair into the circle for Gwen, and the other women shifted around to make room. Gwen felt ridiculous with all this rearranging on her behalf. She gave a little wave to the group but didn’t make eye contact with a single person.
She kept June in her car seat, placed in front of her on the floor. She could feel everyone’s eyes on her.
“I’m Karsha,” the leader woman said. The name didn’t ring any bells. “Why don’t you introduce us to you and your little one?”
Gwen felt nervous in a way she hadn’t since high school. In her years as a lawyer, she had mastered public speaking, no longer felt a tinge of discomfort about it. This surge of anxiety was new and overwhelming.
“Um, I’m Gwen,” she said. Her voice was shaking. She didn’t know why her voice was shaking.
“And this is June.”
She felt the urgent need to swallow, her throat dry and pasty. She dared to look at the woman seated across the circle from her, and she had a pleasant but expectant smile on her face.
