Drew tells you he’s really, really worried. He’s made an appointment with Dr. Schroeder, the psychiatrist from the hospital who asked you all those questions after Caroline was born. You won’t go anywhere without Caroline. He says you can bring her. There’s no way you’re putting her in a cab with faulty seat belts and an erratic driver, or taking her on the subway with all those stairs, strangers coughing and sneezing, the third rail.
You made a mistake. This world is no place for Caroline. You can’t take this fear and pain anymore. You want out. But you can’t do that to her. You wish you could both fall asleep and never wake up. You wish you could bring her back to wherever she came from. Release her from this nightmare world where little girls are taken from camp and strangled in the woods. Then there would be no fear of losing her, ever again.
The only place you feel safe is in your room, in the bed with her, but your mind is there too and won’t leave you alone. You can’t stay like this forever. She’s going to grow older. It’s happening all the time. You see her becoming more alert. Someday she’ll want to go outside. You look out the window at the world, at the buildings soaring all around you, and you feel a panicked twitching in your body. You put Caroline in the carrier to stand up and move your legs. You walk over to the window, look down at the street, six stories below. You see a garage attendant smoking a cigarette, an overflowing trash can, yellow cabs speeding down the street, strangers everywhere. You can’t let her go out there.
Then you look directly below the window, at the sidewalk, and that doesn’t feel quite as scary. The concrete looks smooth and clean from this height. Next to the black asphalt of the street, the light gray of the sidewalk is almost bright. You stare for a while and let your eyes go out of focus, blurring all the city filth surrounding this one patch of concrete until it almost looks like it’s glowing. It’s a soothing trick, to stare at one thing like this, forget about everything else. You sway your body gently. Caroline has fallen asleep. You keep looking and swaying, feeling calm. Then you remember with a bolt of fear that Drew will be home soon to take you to Dr. Schroeder’s office.
Drew. He held so much promise. Back when you thought the worst thing that could happen to you was being alone forever. You were wrong. The love you feel for your baby is the worst thing that’s ever happened to you.
You think about this terrible irony and soon find yourself out on the fire escape, having opened the window and crawled out, barely fitting through with Caroline strapped to you. You feel even more calm in the open air. Caroline is sleeping contentedly, her little face nuzzled between your breasts. You gently run your fingers through her fuzzy hair and smell her head. You look down at the hard sidewalk and a quick panic surges through you. It’s probably going to hurt. But only for a second—and it’s going to hurt a lot more if you don’t do it.