If he had, no argument his mother made, no theory about my nerves, could have gotten him to hold that baby while something was done to him.

Love like that does not negotiate.

It does not wait to be sure, or defer to a grandmother’s confidence, or weigh a wife’s peace of mind against an infant’s safety and land on the side of peace of mind.

My husband had done all of those things, calmly, three nights running.

And the reason he could was that our son was not, to him, a person he would tear the world apart to protect.

Our son was a variable in a problem he was trying to solve, and the problem was me — my worry, my hovering, my refusal to be managed — and Toby had been sedated to make that problem quieter.