Counterpoint The baby was asleep, but Isis was not.
She stood in the darkened nursery, her fingers tightly gripping the top of the cradle’s gate. It was almost like a cage that separated them. But the top was open - exposed. Like the baby could get out and come find her. She couldn’t, obviously; she was too small and too weak. So fragile.
The darkness hid Isis, just like the darkness swirling in her brain, the voice that wouldn’t stop. She loved Nathan, and she wanted to love their child, but the baby was just another accident. This motherhood thing was just not right for her. Or maybe she wasn’t right for it. Isis had thought it was getting better. While a plague of insecurities was not particularly uncommon ground for her, she had been feeling better about those fears as the pregnancy went on. After all, she had Nathan. She wasn’t alone this time, mourning and scared and fifteen years old. She was all grown up, and she had nothing to fear.
But she did fear. She had hoped the last of her nerves would fade away when someone placed that tiny bundle in her arms, but they didn’t. The baby was crying and breakable, and Isis was absolutely terrified.
She was angry, too, and unreasonably so. Sometimes she wasn’t even sure who she was angry at, torn somewhere between the universe and herself, mostly, although sometimes it projected onto Nathan. That was when she felt the worst, because Nathan was an absolutely perfect parent and the single greatest thing to ever happen in her life.
Isis stared at his baby now, her face blank, empty with a hollowness she could not begin to name. Like many nights, the baby sleeping, but she just could not rest.