“He’s not breathing,” I shouted, and I guess my friend Jerry called 911, he must have, because I was busy running across the room, unzipping my baby’s spruce-green onesie, putting my ear to his chest, there, just above the long surgical scar where he’d been opened up, where his tiny heart had been sliced and sewn and, we’d dared to believe, repaired. I tried to shush my panicked breathing. Was that his heartbeat or was it my own wild pulse, racing to keep ahead of the terrible shadowy thing that had already come and gone? The answer: a shattering silence.
Rebecca Gummere is a writer, dreamer, foodener, traveler, and dog person. She lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. rebeccagummere.substack.com Instagram: @rgummere