What do you do when that terrible thing happens. When the sun is shining and the breeze is blowing through the kitchen window and you've kissed a sweet kiss goodbye, and then you see, just a glimpse from the corner of your eye, the baby in the pond. And all of eternity stops and you're racing, clawing through space, through a pastel veil toward that spot of pink in what was a blue pond. And you race, not feeling the rocks under your bare feet, in a lungs-ripped-out-of-your-chest sprint that you are completely oblivious of, even though- even though you know it doesn't matter how fast you get there.

It's too late.

But you run, and you splash in and your skirt floats around your calves, just like the baby's rosebud pink jumper floats around her precious body, and you snatch her up, you grab her up out of that evil, life-smothering water. Her limbs, her head dangle like the newborn she was not long enough ago, and you have to get out of that pond, before it eats you both like acid. You make it to the top of the hill, and then you are too aware that your oxygen has been sucked out of your chest. But somehow you gasp screams through sobs, and somehow a neighbor hears you.

Somehow you find yourself, numb, in a gray, beeping hospital room. He walks in, his face ashen and his eyes sliced through with red. He comes to you and he holds you but your arms are wood, they are heavy logs and they are as responsive as heavy logs. And they ask if you want to hold her. Of course you do... "Give me my baby," whispered.

She is wrapped in a blanket and her eyes are closed, and it isn't her. It isn't her at all. But you can't let go of her, because when you do, you will never hold her again. And he asks, the question that he has to ask but that will kill you over and over again every day that you live.

"How did it happen?"

And you want it to not be your fault, because now you will lose him as well.