My body felt broken, my mind fogged by painkillers and panic. Still, I kept looking toward Adam, waiting for the steady smile he’d worn throughout my pregnancy—the one that always said, We’ve got this.

Instead, all I saw was fear.

“I — I need some air, Allison,” he muttered, avoiding my eyes. “Just a minute.”

That minute stretched into an hour. Then two. Then two days.

By the time my discharge papers were being prepared, all three babies had been cleared as healthy. I was desperate to get them out of the germ-filled hospital. Three different nurses bundled them carefully, each offering warm smiles and sympathetic glances.

And Adam?

Oh, he never came back.

I left the hospital alone two days later, my arms full of newborns and my chest hollowed out by a kind of panic I didn’t know was possible. Adam had taken the car. He said he’d be right back, and I believed him.

I waited. I nursed. I rocked. I cried quietly when no one was looking. But he never returned. When the nurse asked again if someone was coming to pick us up, I nodded and reached for my phone.