Maggie looked at the pill. Did she want to sleep? Yes, by God, she wanted to. But not yet. Thoughts raged in her head. My child is being disposed of, she thought. It's not enough that it's dying. That a monster took it before it was even born. It's being disposed of, too.

Slowly, the truth came. Slowly, the timer went off. Slowly, the bomb exploded. Even though there were no slow explosions. Your child was dead. And it was going to be disposed of, too.

Destroy and die, she thought. What was the difference, anyway? In her job, she knew very well when and where people died. A lot of people died in July.

Because they drowned in some lakes or the sea.

Pregnant women, on the other hand, died most often in September.

Well, she had been pregnant, and it was October. The most deaths were in January, March, and December. Because most, even if they were terminally ill, still wanted to experience Christmas and save themselves over the holidays. Still, give their grandchildren their present before they die.

Either in January. Or as early as December. But almost always after Christmas. And why March? Maybe because March came from Mars, and Mars was the Roman God of war? Maybe, Maggie thought, but didn't give a shit either.

What she did care about was that there had been one too many deaths. And that, this time, it was her child.

She had thought about it before. Ad plures ire, the ancient Romans had said about dying. That meant as much as to go to the many. The many, that was the dead. For probably the number of all the dead who had ever died was still, despite the billions of people in the world, much greater than the number of the living who walked the earth today.

Death, Maggie thought. Would the senseless dying ever stop? Her child was dead. She would never know son or daughter, but her child was dead. One of the countless children who were not allowed to continue to exist. Because a disease, a capricious god, or a perverted murderer had taken pleasure in simply cutting off this very child from the living, whether it was only three weeks, three months, or three years old.

She saw her child before her. And it seemed to speak to her.

Maggie, I will stay with you because I belong with you. Again, tears welled up in Maggie's eyes even more, for the baby was there. It was speaking to her. And yet it was not there. She saw her child. It took a few steps backward. Slowly, one step after the other. And then it was gone. Like a shadow. One of the shadows. One of the other shadows that were also not allowed to continue to exist.

I belong to you, her child had told her. But it was not here. What did it belong to then? To which world? What could have become of them if they had not died much too early, died before they had even entered this world? What would have become of them and all the other dead children had they lived on? And in the real world, not just in memories? Because only in memories there was Maggie's baby. Not even in a picture or video but only in a poorly recognizable ultrasound image.

Time, which supposedly healed all wounds, would only tell Maggie that a lot of time had passed at some point but that all those years, sometimes centuries or millennia, wouldn't change the fact that her baby was dead. That it was dead and would stay dead. And dead forever.

She wondered what her child could have become: a detective or a ME. No, better not, she thought. A general MD or engineer, inventor or entrepreneur.

Her baby didn't have a name yet, but still, the name was written down. The millions of names that shouldn't exist on the blackboard weren't allowed to live, which flickered only briefly, only to be swept away. Lost, passed away, and forgotten. Forgotten except by those who knew that a part of them was missing, that a part of them was dead. And would never be there, am for all eternity.

Burned to blue ash somewhere underground or in a crematorium, or, as in their case, somewhere in pathology, to be disposed of afterward ... Amidst organ waste, stomach ulcers, and adenoids.

No, Maggie thought, this could not happen.

She cried long that night.

Lay long awake and wept and saw before her the face of her child. A face that would never exist.

And then she realized that all her fear of being a mother didn't change the fact that she missed the baby now and needed it. She was here, alone and without her baby. And she realized what she had known for a long time but only now realized: you didn't appreciate things until you lost them. Nothing was precious. Until the day it was gone. And the thing that should have seemed most valuable to her, she had lost. And only now did she realize how much it was worth. What this perverted bastard, who had kicked her in the stomach, what he had taken away from her ...

And suddenly, a terrible hatred rose in her. A disdain for the murderer. A hatred of God. A hatred of death.

She saw a glimmer of light at the door sometime during the night. Light from the hospital hallway. It was Elizabeth. The detective slipped into the room. She sat down by the redhead's bed. Took her hand.

Immediately, Maggie grabbed Elizabeth's. Gripped it as hard as she could.

Elizabeth winced. The detective had been crying, too; Maggie could see it in Elizabeth's eyes. And suddenly she remembered that she had never seen her wife cry before.

"Maggie," Elizabeth whispered, "you're breaking my hand."

"We ... we stay together, don't we?" the ME whispered.

Elizabeth seemed surprised at the question. "Of course. What do you think?"

"The baby --" Maggie's voice became brittle. "It's gone. But us, we're still here?"

Elizabeth took a deep breath and kissed Maggie's hand with a deep frown. "Yes, and we'll stay that way!" She sat on the edge of the bed and waited for her wife to turn on her side so she could lie down, wrapping her arm around the redhead.

They remained in this intimate position for several seconds until Maggie suddenly startled up. "The baby," she said as if something had come to her boiling hot. "My baby ... It's going to pathology."

The redhead didn't see the astonishment on Elizabeth's face. "Yes. But in the middle of the night, you shouldn't --"

Maggie gripped her hand tighter. "You're going to get it for me!"

"What?"

"The baby!"

"The baby will be examined. And then it will --" Elizabeth paused and licked her lips with a furrowed brow. "Disposed of."

"Disposed of ...!?" There was that word again! And now from her wife, too. Also the baby's mother. Maggie gripped Elizabeth's hand so tightly that the detective began to squirm. "You're not going to let this happen, Liz. It's your baby too!"

Elizabeth stroked Maggie's hand, which clutched her wrist as if she hoped it would loosen Maggie's grip. But the redhead didn't. And Elizabeth probably suspected that the ME wouldn't let up until she did something for Maggie.

"The baby," Maggie said. "You have to go get it!"

"It's --" Between tears on her face, Elizabeth's rationality also flashed again, which Maggie couldn't use at the moment.

"It's our baby, Elizabeth," Maggie hissed. And if she hadn't been in a single room, her roommates would have woken up by now at the latest. "And you're not going to let it be burned in some pathology incinerator along with smoker's legs, appendixes, and tumors!" She glared at the detective. Before her eyes, she saw black garbage cans where such waste went at the hospital. The black garbage cans for biological waste with the characteristic Biohazard sign.

"You know it's not incinerated right away," Elizabeth said, remembering the conversation with Katherine when she had explained the steps. "That's not how it goes. It goes into a jar of formalin first that gets labeled; then it goes to the pathologist, and then --"

"Stop it right now," Maggie hissed. "It's our baby. It belongs ... to us!"

Only now did Elizabeth seem to understand what Maggie was getting at. "You're right." Then she asked carefully, as if she still didn't quite get it, "You want me to ... have it handed to me?"

"Yes."

"And if the hospital refuses?"

"Then you steal it!"

"This could cost me my career."

"You take our baby home," Maggie said, her voice dropping two octaves. "So we can bury it." Elizabeth opened her mouth, but the redhead was already continuing to speak. "And if you can't fix this, I'm gone once and for all!"

The ME sank back and turned her back to the detective again.