the opening paragraph.

 xxx

She wasn’t sure when it happened. That slow, sad arc toward not feeling. That moment when indifference turns to empathy and stillness turns to stagnant anger. But it happened still, and that morning, with the sunlight streaming into her coffee, she embraced it. leaned into it, even. And in doing so, leaned even farther away from him.

It was a Sunday, she remembered, when her life was irrevocably altered in the cold hospital room with whitewashed, sanitary walls. A blessed day of rest, spent in an agonizing 48 hours of labor. And then. Sheer, weak relief snatched as soon as it washed into her toes and began up her shins to the rest of her body. A weak cry in her arms, snatched away before she could kiss her forehead, with its goose down hair and squinted eyes. Tests and more tests, visits and more visits, that started on Sunday and continued. A defect. A disability. A despair. And finally, on this Tuesday of reckoning, a discovery.