Chapter 10: What the Fever Was

Laura's POV

Daniel got to the lake road in nine minutes.

He left his car on the shoulder with the door open.

He walked to me across the gravel without his coat.

I was sitting on the guardrail's concrete footing with Winnie's car keys in my fist.

He stopped three feet away.

He didn't reach for me, because of rule one, and I saw him remember it.

"Tell me," I said.

"Can I sit?"

"On the ground. Not next to me."

He sat down in the dirt with his knees up.

"You drove into that bank ten nights after Bea was born," he said.

The lake went on being flat and gray behind him.

"It was snowing. You went through the old rail at about fifty and down onto the rocks."

"I remember the headlights."

"A trucker found the car. He said your headlights were still on."

He pressed his hand over his mouth, then took it away.

"You were in the ICU four days, Laura. You had a skull fracture and a bleed on your brain."

"Four days."

"They told me to call your sister. I thought they meant you might not make it."

My hand went to my hairline, to the thin pale scar I had always been told came from a cabinet door.

"When you woke up, you didn't know Bea had been born," he said. "You asked me when the baby was coming."

"No."

"You asked it three times."

I couldn't speak.

"On the fifth day you stopped sleeping," he said. "You said the baby wasn't yours."

"Daniel."

"You said someone had taken your real one. You tried to leave the unit in your gown."

I was shaking my head.

"After a birth, with a head injury on top, it can happen. They called it postpartum psychosis."

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