At 5:12 in the morning, I was carrying a laundry basket full of baby clothes down the stairs when my foot missed the third step from the bottom.
I remember the time because I’d just looked at the clock on the microwave through the kitchen doorway. 5:12. I’d been up since 2:40 with Leo, who was teething, and then at 3:55 with Sam, who wasn’t teething but didn’t want his brother getting all the attention. I’d fed them both. Changed them both. Rocked them both. Gotten them both back to sleep.
Then I’d realized they were out of clean sleepers. Every single one. So I’d gone to the dryer at 4:50, folded everything on the floor of the laundry room in the dark, and started back up the stairs with the basket.
Then I remembered I’d left a bottle soaking in the sink. So I turned around and started back down.
I wasn’t looking at my feet. I was looking at the clock. I was thinking about how I had maybe ninety minutes before one of them woke up again. I was thinking about whether I should sleep or shower or just sit on the kitchen floor and stare at the wall.
My sock slipped.
I don’t remember the fall. Just the sound. A crack, like a branch snapping under snow. Then the laundry basket bouncing down the stairs ahead of me, and tiny sleepers flying everywhere, and me at the bottom on the hardwood floor with my left arm bent under me at an angle arms aren’t supposed to bend.
The pain came a second later. White and enormous. It filled my whole body. I couldn’t breathe.
Upstairs, I heard one of the babies start to cry.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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