I locked my wife in the pantry under the stairs

on me. “Andrew, listen carefully. Emily needs a doctor. She crawled through that passage after you locked her in. She fell once. She was bleeding a little when she reached me.”

The room tilts.

I look at her hand on her stomach.

“Emily.”

“Don’t,” she says.

One word.

It stops me better than a wall.

Not because she is cruel. Because I have lost the right to continue reading …