Dave’s smile faltered.
Mrs. Higgins straightened in her chair. “What is he talking about?” she snapped, but Dave was too busy recovering his swagger to answer. He barked a laugh and ended the call with a hard tap of his thumb, as if cutting off the voice would cut off the danger behind it.
Then he looked down at you again.
“You’re unbelievable,” he said. “Bleeding all over the floor just to cause a scene.” He stood, shoved his phone into his pocket, and pointed toward the blood. “Get up. Clean yourself up before anyone gets here. If the paramedics show, you slipped. If the police show, you got dizzy. Understand?”
Another wave of pain tore through you so violently your vision blurred.
You couldn’t answer. You barely stayed conscious. Your body had shrunk into a battlefield of pressure, heat, and panic, and somewhere under all of that, the most primitive terror of your life was screaming one thing over and over: not the baby, not the baby, not the baby.
Mrs. Higgins clicked her tongue and rose from her chair.
“You should have learned sooner,” she said, looming over you in pearls and silk and contempt. “A wife who can’t handle simple expectations deserves what happens to her.” She bent slightly, as if she might actually help, and for one stupid instant your body reacted with hope. Then she hissed, “If you stain the grout, I’ll send you the bill.”
Dave grabbed a dish towel and threw it at the floor near your knees.
“Wipe it up,” he said. “Now.”
You stared at him in disbelief.
The room smelled like mushroom soup, roast beef, wine, and blood. A spoon lay overturned near the table leg where it had fallen when you screamed. The overhead kitchen lights were too bright, too white, turning everything sharp and unreal, and somewhere outside, through the sealed windows, the suburban evening carried on as if women did not lose babies between granite counters and dinner plates every day.
Then the first siren cut through the street.
Dave’s head snapped toward the front of the house.
Mrs. Higgins went pale, but only for a second. She recovered faster than he did, because women like her build their lives around denial the way other people build them around love. “Get her up,” she hissed. “Now. Put her on the couch. Tell them she fainted.” 
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