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We held each other in the hallway for a few seconds, while most of the hospital staff streamed out of Liz’s room. All of them had their eyes fixed on the ground before them, unwilling to make eye contact with two parents who just lost a child, a woman who lost a daughter-in-law, and the man they knew would now be alone in raising a newborn baby. One of them closed the door to Liz’s room on the way out.

“Do you know what it was?” I asked Dr. Nelson.

“We’re pretty sure it was a blood clot that went from her leg into her lungs. We’ll do some tests to confirm.” She squeezed me again, looked mournfully at all of us and then walked away.

Even though my family was with me, I felt alone. Like I needed the wall to hold me up.

I thought about my fear of dead bodies. I’d seen a few of them, mostly at funerals and three times while in India, lying in the middle of the road after being hit by vehicles. I always avoided looking—nothing like the immediacy of a newly dead body to force a confrontation with your own mortality. But with Liz it was different. I wanted to—had to—see her, touch her, hold her hands one last time.

The grief counselor reappeared. I heard her hurling platitudes from some 1970s social work textbook at Tom, Candee, and my mom, all of whom accepted them with grace. But I ignored her, knowing that if we talked at that moment, my family would hear me say some things I’d regret. I heard her tell them that Liz was being cleaned up and that we could go in to see her soon. Jesus. This process is so fucking clinical. As if having her cleaned up was going to make this any easier. I hated the counselor, and I made a mental note to complain about her when I finally got my shit together. That was not something I normally would have done, but I thought about how Liz would have handled the situation, and I can guarantee it would not have been pretty.

Anya was walking toward us just as that awful woman finished talking. Fuck. She had no idea what I was about to tell her. As soon as I got the words out, she broke down. I held her, letting her cry on me. My family came to us and held us. We all just stood in the hallway together, unable to comfort each other in any other way.

A few minutes later, the door to Liz’s room was opened and someone told me I could go inside. I took a deep breath as I walked through the doorway alone. I stared at her, my eyes dry for the first time in a while.

There she was, and there she wasn’t. Eyes closed, skin pale. There was a tube in her mouth with some vomit stuck inside of it. Fuck. She looked awful. So much for cleaning her up.

I got closer and sat on the edge of her bed. I ran my hand over her head, brushing back her hair like I did when she was sick. It felt coarse and dry, like straw. It felt dead. Liz’s hair never felt like that—it was the softest hair I’d ever felt. I touched her forehead, and all I could think was that I’d never before touched anyone or anything that cold. Fuck. Just a little while ago she was up and walking around, soft hair, warm skin, big smile, all the excitement of a new mother, but now…How could this be?

I grabbed her right hand, the same hand I had held as I walked her around the room not even an hour ago, and squeezed it the way I did when I was trying to secretly convey something to her when we were in public. I ran my thumb up and down her hand like I did when we watched movies on our couch. The tears came again. How could I get this image out of my mind? I did not want this to be my last memory of my wife. But there wouldn’t be any more memories. This was it.

I closed my eyes as hard as I could, trying to erase what I’d just seen. I tried to remember her smile as she was about to go see Madeline. I tried to remember how her skin felt when I walked her around this room. I tried to remember how beautiful she looked. Holding her hand there on her bed, I kept repeating, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I knew it wasn’t my fault, just like it wasn’t anybody else