I saw myself.

I wore a pale green hospital robe, and my disheveled, greasy hair hung lank down my back. My shoulders were hunched and my head was down as I sat in the hospital’s dark wooden rocking chair, next to the empty incubator. Barry Richardson crouched before me, his hand on my arm, his head tilted forward.

I was not crying.

That part I remembered; I did not cry. Not then. Not when Dr. Patterson announced the time of death in his soft, almost apologetic voice. And I had not cried that morning, just a few hours earlier, as he explained why they needed to remove the life support systems. As he’d said the words, “zero chance of survival.”

My stomach clenched violently, and my vision doubled. My breath came in great gulps, tearing at the sterile hospital air, and I fell to my knees.

“God, no,” I hissed, squeezing my eyes shut.

The machines of the hospital hissed and clicked and beeped. I opened my eyes and the blue and white pattern of the hospital’s linoleum floor swam into view.

“I am so sorry for your loss,” Dr. Patterson said in that same measured, level voice. I remembered wondering if he’d learned that in medical school, the perfect tone for condolences.

Barry’s voice caught in a ragged sob. I stared at him. Tears streamed down his face, leaving dark wet splotches on his white Oxford shirt. That part I didn’t remember. I had forgotten his tears.

I took a deep breath and forced myself to look at the hunched figure in the rocking chair. My younger self.

The Karen in the chair did not move. She did not acknowledge Dr. Patterson’s words. Meredith sat in her lap, locked in her trembling arms, her small, still body wrapped in the pink and blue stripes of the hospital blanket. I’d rocked her against my chest all morning as the machines keeping her alive were turned off, slowly, one by one. There were still needles in her tiny arms and bands around her ankles. But she was turning cold. I remembered that, how quickly her small body grew cold.

Karen Richardson was not crying. Not the woman sitting in the rocking chair, the woman who was still married to Barry, who had just become a mother and then suddenly, horribly, not become a mother.

But I was sobbing, sitting on the floor of the cave, watching myself. Watching my daughter.

Dr. Patterson reached for the Karen in the rocking chair, his arms crossing the space between his rolling office chair and her hunched shoulders.

“No,” I heard myself say, my voice choked and thick. “Don’t take her!”

Barry knelt beside me, pressing his forehead against mine. “Karen,” he said. “She’s gone.”

There was a low, animal sound, a sort of deep howl, from the woman in the rocking chair. And then a choked, wracked sobbing. The word no.

No. No. No.

They had to pull her from my arms as Barry held me back. And I hit him. My hand lashed out, following Meredith and slamming into my husband’s face so hard I knocked his glasses to the floor.

The round tortoiseshell frames skittered across the cold linoleum, coming to rest just in front of my dirt-stained knees, as a nurse finally pulled Meredith’s cold little body away from the screaming, hysterical woman in the rocking chair, the woman they would soon be sedating. I tried to turn away as the nurse walked past me, but I saw everything. I saw my once-husband’s very expensive glasses glinting on the floor. I saw Dr. Patterson whisper to the nurse, ordering a sedative.

And I saw my daughter’s perfect little face. Her dark lashes. Her scattering of downy hair.

My Meredith.

I collapsed on the floor of the cave, shaking, pulling my knees to my chest.

“Go away!” I heard myself growl.

My eyes squeezed shut as my cheek pressed against the cold dirt of the cave’s floor. I remembered this part, too.

“Karen, please,” Barry said. His voice trembled. He knelt in front of me, I remembered. He knelt in front of me, and he opened his arms. “Please.”

I heard the rocking chair scrape across the floor as the woman who had been me pulled away from her husband. “No,” she said. Her voice was almost a shriek. “Don’t touch me! Just go away!”

I opened my eyes enough to see Barry’s shoulders shudder as his head dropped to his chest. My heart ached with a sharp, empty throb. You could have found some comfort in each other, I realized. What an idiot you are, Karen McDonald.

What a great, fucking idiot.

The voices fell silent; the smell of disinfectant and baby powder was gradually replaced by the heavy burnt scent of the cave. The hospital room slowly faded, and I was alone in the vast, pressing darkness, curled on the cold floor of the cave. I crammed my fist in my mouth to silence my sobs.

****

EVENTUALLY, MY TEARS ran dry, and my stiff, cold legs began to ache. I pushed myself off the dirt, rubbing my palms across my eyes.

“What now?” I whispered to the darkness. My own voice bounced back to me.

Now? Now? Now?

I stood and tried to shake some warmth back into my body before I raised my hands and turned in a slow circle in the darkness. I felt nothing. The air in the cave was perfectly motionless. The back of my mouth tasted bitter, and I swallowed hard.

It was impossible to judge time in the cave. I moved forward one shuffling step at a time, inching along the smooth, downward-sloping floor, breathing deeply and trying not to think. Perhaps I’d been walking for five minutes. Or fifteen. Or fifty.

Slowly, the darkness enveloping me began to lift. Once again, I realized I could see my fingertips, ten pale dots floating in front of my eyes. My stomach clenched. I froze as my ears throbbed with the wild pounding of my heart. What the hell would I see this time?

But I knew.

I already knew.