Baby, I know all about it, I said.

I held that prize-in-flesh above my head and processed through the crowd to mother’s stretcher, where I tucked baby between the woman’s chest and left arm. He clawed at her gown, mewed for someone to pet his ears, neck, back. I did pet that baby, and then a purr emanated from deep in his chest. An ED resident placed a call to Pediatrics, saying seven, nine, into the phone and he looks good, while the OB/GYN resident did something bloody between the mother’s shaking thighs.

I petted the boy and thought, Why do people keep doing this?

And the baby thought back, You know why.

Four years ago on the lawn just to the south of the Grand Teton Lodge in Wyoming, my two children tossed bean bags at each other while my husband coached the girl, Sophie, but not the boy, Trevor. Trevor’s every movement was too late, too much. She’s got touch, said my husband of Sophie. Sophie rubbed the blue, felt toy, pendulated her arm, released. Watch her stick the landing, said my husband. But Trevor’s bean bag flew wildly, dribbled over the blacktop walk and under the guard rail, then down the steep, rock-strewn hill where insects large enough to pet startled from asters.

My genes don’t make mistakes, said husband.

At the trailhead the day before, a ranger had explained about bears, but we saw no animals on the hike except the flies around the outhouses, a dead rattlesnake, and a Steller’s Jay. Though now that I think about it, I do remember a bear, a grizzly loping across a high mountain meadow; I can still see the bear as if watching through binoculars from across the valley. The bear stops in front of a three dry pines, stands on his hind legs, reaches towards a pack suspended with black, nylon rope. Trevor is with me, watching. We take turns with the binoculars. Trevor, hopping around like he always did. Trevor, be careful, I said. Be careful of the edge, dear.

That baby from three weeks ago was at the edge of the stretcher; his mother might have crushed him or pushed him onto the floor accidentally, but for me, there, hovering.

You want another baby, thought the baby into my head.

Yes, but what can you do, I said.

This morning, while my husband and I are still abed, a late winter sleet falls from the light, gray sky onto the slate, gray roof. My husband, flat on his back, his elbows tucked close to his chest, squints at his phone.

I got to hold a newborn yesterday! I say.

Glorious, says my husband, then he taps the screen.

That baby was fire, I say. A small, warm tornado on my chest, speaking to me without language.

Um, says my husband.

From the bathroom comes the sound of an airplane at thirty thousand feet, and I can see the entirety of the earth. I can see the haloed cities, the irregular coastlines. The Great Lakes draining the continent of rain—all the rivers align in the direction of current. A moon rolls by, then Mars, and I see canals in that red terrain with sides so steep that it wouldn’t matter how high you might jump or where you might place your feet; you’d never be able to climb out.

My husband waves at the steep stacks of books on the carpet, says, I can’t live like this; do you think you can do something about the clutter? And when I don’t respond right away, he gets out of bed, moves to the window. Beyond the whitening lawns and through the branches of bleak, gray trees one can make out a playground behind the supermarket. There, as toddlers, our twins climbed on a web of black, braided nylon that ran seven feet on the diagonal from the platform to the balance beam. Trevor caught his leg in the net, fell, split his chin, embedded a wood chip deep in it. (This later got infected, swelled up the floor of his mouth, and then he was afraid of moving his face for some months and late to talk, though he had always been.) Now, the late winter sleet transforms into freezing rain, and the sound of its strike on the metal gutters recalls his faint pulse.

Husband says, Time to make sausages for Sophie.

I say, I want another baby. But if you want, we can get a pet instead.