It did not move.

It had been jammed, deliberately and completely, into uselessness.

“Victor!” I called, and my voice bounced flat off the frozen steel.

“Victor, the door closed!

Open it!”

The cold came for me immediately, cutting straight through my thin cotton maternity dress, and I pulled at that emergency handle until my palms tore, and it did not give, and somewhere underneath the rising panic a small terrible voice was already beginning to understand that a door does not jam like that by accident on the same night the pallets are moved and the lights flicker and my husband happens to be waiting outside.

I will not linger on the cold, or the fear, in the pages that follow.