One moment I was leaning against the kitchen island, palms flat on the smooth stone, breathing through the familiar pressure of thirty-six weeks of pregnancy that made even standing feel like a marathon, thinking about the pale green curtains I still hadn’t hung in the nursery, wondering if the baby would arrive early like the doctor had warned, humming softly because silence made my thoughts spiral.
Water slammed into my chest and belly with the force of a thrown object rather than a spill, soaking through my sweater instantly, stealing the air from my lungs as if my ribs had been squeezed shut by invisible hands. The sound came first, a violent, echoing splash that cracked through the kitchen like a gunshot, and only after that did the cold register, sharp and unforgiving, burrowing into my skin so fast it felt like knives sliding under my flesh.
My knees gave out before I could think, before I could scream, before my brain could catch up with my body, and I slid down the cabinet doors, my shoulder scraping wood, my hip slamming into the tile with a dull, humiliating thud that knocked what little breath I had left completely out of me.
“Now maybe you’ll wake up,” a voice said above me, crisp and satisfied, as if she had just finished correcting a child rather than assaulting a pregnant woman.
I wrapped my arms around my belly instinctively, my hands slipping over wet fabric, my teeth already chattering so hard I could feel them vibrate against each other, and when the baby kicked—hard, sudden, panicked—I let out a broken sound that was half sob, half gasp.
Standing over me was Evelyn Hart, my mother-in-law, holding an empty plastic bucket as casually as if she had just finished watering a plant. She looked perfectly composed, dressed in a soft gray cardigan, pearl studs in her ears, her hair neatly styled, her expression almost bored, which somehow made the moment more terrifying than if she had been screaming.
“Ice water?” I managed to whisper, my throat burning. “Why… why would you—”
“To knock some sense into you,” she interrupted, dropping the bucket into the sink with a sharp metallic clang. “Lying around all day pretending pregnancy is an illness doesn’t make you delicate, it makes you lazy.”
I tried to push myself upright, but my balance was wrong, my center of gravity foreign, and the cold had already locked my muscles, so I slipped again, my elbow striking the floor, pain blooming white-hot through my arm.
