All Fours

The narrator spends the next two days holed up in Room 321. Meanwhile, she continues to communicate with Harris, inventing lies about New York and the drive. One day, she lies in bed and imagines describing the room to future interviewers. She suddenly feels as if the room is a trap and falls asleep. She wakes up to music in the street and remembers that it’s Memorial Day. Harris texts her, saying “Happy May 31” (62).

May 31 was Sam’s original due date. The narrator woke in the night to the sound of an imagined voice telling her to go to the hospital. The labor was long and difficult, and the doctors weren’t sure whether Sam would survive. The nurse informed her that she had fetal-maternal hemorrhage (FMH), meaning that Sam’s blood had leaked from the umbilical cord, and that most women who had FMH birthed stillborn babies.

The narrator and Harris spent the following days traveling between home and the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at the hospital, waiting to hear if Sam would survive. Throughout this time, they had passionate sex. Finally, Sam pulled through and started recovering.