Those were the exact words my mother said to me on the phone while I was sitting in a quiet hospital hallway trying to understand how my six-month-old daughter had disappeared from my life overnight.
I can still hear the hum of the vending machine behind me.
I can still smell antiseptic and old coffee and the faint sweetness of baby lotion on my own shirt from where I had held Daisy against my chest until the nurse gently told me I didn’t have to keep trying to warm a body that was already gone.
And I can still hear my mother’s voice—dry, impatient, almost distracted, like I was interrupting her while she looked for matching serving trays.
“It’s just a baby,” she repeated when I didn’t answer fast enough. “Ryan’s launch party has been planned for weeks. Your father has investors coming. You can grieve without making everything inconvenient for everyone else.”
My hand shook so hard the phone tapped against my ear.
I looked through the little square window in the ICU family room door and saw the rocking chair where I had sat half the night with Daisy wrapped in a yellow hospital blanket, singing nonsense songs between doctors and alarms and words like oxygen saturation and septic shock and we’re doing everything we can.
