I had spent all my tears beside a ventilator.
The first time I took Lily home, I threw away everything from the nursery shelf.
Not just the powder.
The wipes. The lotion. The little brush with soft white bristles. The stuffed giraffe that had watched my daughter laugh thirty seconds before she stopped breathing.
I knew the giraffe had done nothing wrong.
I threw it away anyway.
Trauma is not logical. It is a smell trapped in plastic. A sound hidden inside a cap. A patch of sunlight on a changing pad that your body starts treating like a crime scene.
For a while, I lived by lists.
Check the windows. Check the locks. Check the labels. Check Lily’s breathing. Check the camera. Check again.
Then one night, three months after the hospital, Lily laughed.
Not a weak sound. Not a tired one.
A full bubbling laugh because I had dropped a clean sock on my own head while folding laundry.
I froze with the sock in my hand.
Then I laughed too.
