If she needed me awake, I was going to stay awake.
Patricia did not see it that way.
She had already complained twice about the noise.
The first time, she had opened her bedroom door and told me to take Lily farther down the hall.
The second time, she had walked into the kitchen while I was warming a bottle and asked how a baby that small could possibly be that loud.
I had been too tired to argue.
I told her I was doing everything I could.
By midnight, apparently that was not enough for her.
I heard her bedroom door open behind me.
I turned slightly, still bouncing Lily against my shoulder.
Patricia walked toward me with her jaw tight and her robe pulled closed across her chest.
“She has been screaming all night,” she said.
“I know.”
“Then do something.”
“I am doing something.”
Lily cried again, louder this time.
I shifted her carefully and tried to guide her head back toward my shoulder.
“She’s three weeks old, Patricia. She doesn’t have an off switch.”
That was when Patricia hit me.
There was no warning.
No raised voice first.
No argument long enough for me to realize the situation was changing.
Her palm struck my cheek, my head snapped sideways, and the hallway seemed to tilt beneath my feet.
My ears rang.
My balance went sideways.
“Shut her up, or get out of the house!” Patricia shouted.
My arms opened for one terrible fraction of a second.
Lily slipped.
I felt the weight disappear from my chest before my exhausted mind understood what was happening.
Her tiny body hit the hardwood floor.
Then the crying stopped.
The silence was instant.
Wrong.
Impossible.
“Lily!”
I dropped to my knees so hard I barely felt the impact.
She lay motionless, eyes closed, one little fist curled beside her face.
For the first few seconds, I could not seem to process the size of her against the floor.
She looked impossibly small.
I had spent three weeks watching every breath she took.
Now I was staring at her chest, begging myself to see movement.
“Lily, baby, come on.”
I reached toward her, then hesitated because suddenly I was terrified that touching her the wrong way could make things worse.
The sudden quiet was worse than every scream that had come before it.
Daniel came running from the bedroom.
“What happened?”
He stopped when he saw me kneeling on the floor.
Then he saw Lily.
His expression changed immediately.
“Call 911!” I screamed.
Behind me, Patricia had gone pale.
For one second, I expected her to rush toward Lily.
