Eight Weeks Earlier, I Buried a Life I Never Got to Meet
Her name was supposed to be Lily.
My fiancée, Lauren, and I had already started saying it out loud.
Lauren and I had been together for four years.
Brilliant. Ambitious. The kind of person who walked into a room and made it feel sharper.
When she showed me the positive pregnancy test, something in my chest shifted.
After twelve years of running toward fires and chaos, I thought I was finally running toward peace.
But Lauren went into labor early.
I raced from the station, still in uniform, barely registering the streetlights or the sound of my own breathing.
By the time I arrived at the hospital, she was already in recovery.
I asked to see the baby.
