The phone rings for the forty-seventh time. I know because I've been counting. Counting keeps me from screaming in this sterile hospital corridor where the fluorescent lights hum like dying insects and the smell of antiseptic burns my throat. "Please," I whisper into the voicemail again. "Marcus, she's coding. They're—they're doing everything they can, but you need to come. Please. Our baby needs you. I need you." My hands shake so violently I nearly drop the phone. Through the small window in the ICU door, I can see nurses swarming around the tiny bed where my daughter lies. Where Emma lies, her small body fighting a battle she's too young to understand. Meningitis, they said. Came on so fast. One moment she was complaining of a headache at the twins' birthday party yesterday, the next she was burning up with fever, her neck stiff, her beautiful brown eyes glazed with confusion. The phone goes to voicemail again. Marcus's smooth, professional voice: "You've reached Marcus Chen. I'm unavailable—" I hang up. Dial again. Nothing. A nurse pushes through the door, her face carefully blank in that way medical professionals have when they're about to destroy your world. "Mrs. Chen—" "No." The word rips from my throat. "No, please, we're still trying to reach her father, he's on his way, just give her a few more—" "I'm so sorry." Three words. That's all it takes to end a life. Not the life that just slipped away in that room—my baby, my Emma, my sunshine girl who laughed like bells and collected rocks she thought looked like hearts—but mine too. I don't remember falling. I don't remember the nurse catching me. I don't remember much of anything except the howling sound filling the hallway, and the distant realization that it's coming from me. --- I call Marcus seventy-three more times over the next six hours. He answers at 2:47 AM. "Nina, Jesus Christ, do you know what time it is? I'm at the Grandview Gala, I can't just—" "Emma's dead." Silence. Long enough that I check if the call dropped. "Marcus?" "I... what?" My voice sounds like gravel. Like I've been screaming for hours. I have been. "Our daughter died at 8:32 PM. Alone. Because her father was too busy at a party to answer his phone." "That's not—Nina, you're being unfair. How was I supposed to know it was that serious? You're always so dramatic about every little—" I hang up. He doesn't call back. --- The funeral is on Thursday. Rain pours from a grey sky that matches the stone in my chest where my heart used to be. I stand alone at the tiny white casket. Our son Ethan clings to my leg, five years old and confused about why his twin sister is sleeping in a box. Marcus's parents came, stayed for exactly twenty minutes, and left with pressed lips and disappointed eyes, as if Emma's death was somehow my failure as a mother. Marcus doesn't come at all. He texts at 3 PM: *Something came up at work. We'll talk when I get home.* I turn my phone off and bury my daughter in the rain. --- He comes home six days later. I've been sitting in Emma's room for most of that time, surrounded by her stuffed animals and the faint smell of her strawberry shampoo. The room still looks like her—purple walls covered in her crayon drawings, the bookshelf overflowing with fairy tales, the toy box she never quite learned to close all the way. Marcus appears in the doorway, his suit crisp despite the late hour. He looks tired. Annoyed. "We need to talk about this room," he says. I stare at him. I haven't showered in three days. I'm wearing the same clothes I wore to the funeral. There are tissues scattered around me like snow. "What?" He sighs, running a hand through his perfectly styled hair. "Nina, I know you're grieving. I am too. But we need to be practical. This room—it's just sitting here, unused. Claire's son needs a study space for his tutoring sessions when she brings him over after work, and—" "Get out." "Don't be unreasonable. We have to move forward. Keeping this room like a shrine isn't healthy—" "GET OUT!" I'm on my feet, I'm throwing things—a stuffed unicorn, a picture frame, a jewelry box that shatters against the wall. Marcus backs away, hands up, his face twisted in disgust. "You're hysterical. I'll come back when you're rational." He leaves. I hear his car start, drive away. I sink to the floor among Emma's things and finally understand: my husband wasn't at a gala that night. He was with Claire. He's always been with Claire. And my daughter died alone because I married a man who never loved us at all. --- The pills are in the bathroom cabinet. Sleep aids, anxiety medication, pain relievers from my C-section five years ago. I line them up on the counter. Ethan is at my mother's house. He'll be okay. He'll be better off without a mother who couldn't save his sister, who couldn't make his father love them enough to answer the phone. I swallow the first handful. Then the second. The world goes soft around the edges, warm and blurry. I close my eyes. And wait for Emma.