Instead, she looked toward the hallway where the baby had been taken.
“I need to see my child.”
“They’re still being evaluated,” the nurse repeated.
My wife turned back toward me.
“If you had just listened to me at home, none of this would be happening.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“You want to blame me for this?”
“You don’t know what it feels like.”
“Then tell me.”
Her jaw tightened.
For several seconds, she said nothing.
Then she whispered, “I look in the mirror and I don’t recognize myself.”
That was the first thing she said that sounded like pain instead of anger.
And for a moment, I almost stepped toward her.
Almost.
Then I remembered the bathroom floor.
I remembered the baby’s frightened cry.
I remembered my wife standing beside the sink and telling me she wanted me to choose.
Whatever she was feeling, it could not become an excuse for what she had done.
The nurse asked whether she had ever told anyone she regretted becoming a mother.
My wife looked at the floor.
“I told my husband.”
“Anyone else?”
She didn’t answer.
The nurse glanced at me.
I understood why.
There were details I had dismissed because they seemed too small when they happened one at a time.
The unopened parenting book.
The baby clothes she refused to help put away.
The photographs she deleted from her phone.
The nights she left the room when the baby cried.
The way she sometimes stared at her old clothes hanging in the closet and said, “I want my body back.”
I had heard every one of those things.
I just hadn’t connected them.
My wife finally sat down. matghdhach azbu
“I never wanted this,” she said.
The nurse kept her voice calm. “What do you mean?”
“Motherhood. All of it.”
I closed my eyes for a second.
There it was again.
The sentence from her message.
I NEVER WANTED TO BE A MOTHER.
But then she said something I hadn’t expected.
“I told him before we got married.”
I looked at her.
“No, you didn’t.”
She raised her eyes to mine.
“I told you I didn’t want children.”
My mind went back through our conversations.
She had said she wasn’t sure.
She had said maybe someday.
She had said she wanted to wait.
