I lay on my side and tried to blink, to clear my head. Everything had slowed almost to a stop. Blood was in my eyes and I couldn’t really open them. I was viciously dizzy. I lay still and heard myself pant. When I could, I wiped my face and opened my eyes. I saw the rock on the floor. That is what I had tripped over. It was brown and silvery and huge. A big rock on the kitchen floor. I remember thinking even then, even there. What’s this rock doing here?

And then something else. Nearby a child was laughing.

None of it was clear to me. I tried to focus my mind on this thing and that—getting the blood out of my eyes, seeing clearly, regaining my balance. But reality was tipped on its side and I could not right it. The child’s laughter remained above and inside and around my confusion. It was the only constant and it was very clear.

“What happened to you? This is a bad cut.”

“I fell.”

The doctor stopped bustling for the first time since entering the room. An ugly woman with a monk’s haircut, she narrowed her eyes. “You fell?” She was wearing white surgical gloves and she pointed a finger at the bandage on my forehead. “That doesn’t look like a fall, Ms. Romanac. Are you sure?” Her smile lasted a second. We both knew what she was saying. “It looks like you were struck with something. Something heavy and sharp.” Her voice rose indignantly on the last word. Her stern face was ready to be outraged. If I didn’t tell her the truth, I would feel that rage. She moved and spoke with the undiscerning sureness of a hanging judge. I was glad I didn’t know her.

I started to shake my head but my neck hurt terribly, so I stopped. “My neck hurts too.”

She put a hand on it and gently felt up and down with her fingers. “That’s normal. It’s either the trauma from the fall or you jerked it unnaturally and twisted the muscles. It’ll go away in a couple of days. But this is what really concerns me.” Again she pointed to my forehead. “We don’t usually see this kind of cut from a fall.”

I took a deep breath and let it out in an aggravated, tired-of-this whoosh. “No one bit me, Doctor. All right? I’m alone. The man I lived with died a few days ago.”

Her expression remained unchanged. Emergency room doctors have heard every lie and story in the world. “I’m sorry. But a wound like this usually indicates abuse. I could explain the technicalities of it to you, but that’s not necessary. Are you on any kind of medication?”

“No. I was given Valium but I don’t take it.”

She went to her desk and scribbled on a pad. “Here is a prescription for a muscle relaxant for your neck, and this one is for pain. Are you seeing anyone? A counselor or a therapist? They can be very helpful when you’ve lost someone close.”

“Ghosts,” I wanted to say. I’m not seeing a therapist but I have seen ghosts. One even threw a rock at me.

“Thank you for your concern, Doctor. Do I have to come back here?”

“Yes. I’ll need to remove the stitches in a week.”

I stood up very slowly but still my head throbbed and pain went down the back of my neck in a fiery shot. I wanted to be out of that room, away from that aggressive, offensive woman, out in the world again. All I wanted was to be out on the street.

“We also have the results of your pregnancy test and sonogram, Ms. Romanac. They were positive.”

My back to her, I tried to turn my head but the pain said no. I turned completely around to face her. There was nothing to say. I already knew it and had taken the hospital test as an afterthought. The day Hugh died I knew I was pregnant but never had the chance to tell him. That was the worst. The absolute worst part.

“You could talk to our counselor about that as well.”

I didn’t understand what she meant. She saw the question on my face and tightened her lips.

“The child. If your partner is gone then perhaps you might want to consider terminations…”

I caught the gist of what she was saying more from her tone of voice than from the actual words.

“I’m having this baby, Doctor. Can I go now?”

“Would you like to know if it’s a boy or a girl?”

I started for the door. “It’s a boy. I already know.”

Her voice was haughty and dismissive. “No, actually it’s a girl.”

My lover made the best sandwiches. He loved to cook, but sandwiches were his specialty. He made pilgrimages to special bakeries around Manhattan to buy the perfect California sourdough bread, Austrian dreikornbrot, Italian focaccia. He experimented with exotic ingredients and condiments like piri piri, wasabi, mango chutney. He poured thin trickles of specially prepared kurbiskernol onto bread and warmed it before he did anything else. He owned the most beautiful and ominous set of Japanese cooking knives I’d ever seen. I think he enjoyed sharpening and caring for them as much as he liked using them.

All of these things went through my mind as I opened the refrigerator door to look for something to eat an hour after returning from the hospital. One day he was dead. Four days later he was buried. Three days later I saw him standing in our backyard with a child who had never been born. One week. Exactly one week to the day ago I discovered I was pregnant and Hugh died.

On a shelf was a large slice of fontina, his favorite cheese. He would cut a piece and hold it in an open palm, telling me to look—look at this masterpiece of kдsekunst. Some of his “cheese art” and an apple. I would be able to eat those small things without getting sick, wouldn’t I? Dinner. I had not eaten for a long time. I wasn’t hungry, but I had to eat regularly now. For the child. For the girl inside me. Girl or boy, it was Hugh’s child and I would care for it with every cell in my body.

I wasn’t afraid to be in the kitchen again. Opening the front door an hour before and stepping into the house, I had been, but it passed. I turned on all the lights and walked from room to room. Sometimes I said out loud, too loud, “Hello?” But that had only been to fill the space and the silence around me. When I had seen that every room was empty, I was okay. I was even able to walk into the kitchen and look out the window at the backyard again. Night had come and there was nothing to see out there.

I turned on the radio and was pleased to hear the last part of Keith Jarrett’s Kцln Concert, one of my favorite pieces of music. Set the table and eat something so you have strength. I took a canary yellow place mat out of a drawer, and a large blue plate from the cupboard.

The refrigerator was full of Hugh’s things—the Lavazza coffee he liked so much, the fiery Jamaican sauce he used to make jerk chicken, sesame oil, lime pickle. I saw them and knew each could break my heart if I started thinking about them. There were the cheese and apples, and now it was time to eat. Take them out. Close the door. Remember to clean out the refrigerator sometime soon so you don’t keep bumping into those things.

When the Jarrett finished, some awful grating jazz replaced it. I switched the radio off. The silence around me was suddenly huge and rising like a tidal wave, so I quickly turned on the small television across the kitchen table. Hugh loved TV and made no excuses for watching infomercials, bowling, mindless situation comedies. Oddly, he usually watched standing up, even if it meant standing there for hours. At first having him standing two feet away while watching Friends made me uncomfortable, but gradually I grew to like it.

Part of living with someone is growing to enjoy their eccentricities. Hugh Oakley sometimes slept in his socks. He wrote notes to himself on his index finger in green ink, was suspicious of microwave ovens, and watched television standing up.

What do you do with your love for someone when they die? Or the memories they’ve left? Do you pack them up in moving boxes and write strange names for them across the top? Then where do you put them and the rest of a life you were supposed to share with a person who left without warning?