Katia's Worst Memory

Story so far

After the adoption denial, Katia did not go home. She slipped down a hospital hallway, told a nurse she only wanted to say hello, and entered a long ward with six or seven cribs, all empty but one. There she held baby Annie for the last time, careful of the IV tube, and sang and swayed with her until the child fell asleep. Katia tells Carl this is the worst moment of her life because she knew it was the last time she would see the girl, and in the same breath calls it her favorite memory and the place she keeps coming back to.

Standing beside it in the dream, Katia admits she was so certain she would kill herself afterward that she felt a calming sense of peace, until the thought arrived that the agency might change its mind and Annie would have no one. They never changed their minds. Carl recognizes that moment of finality as the same one he felt at the last moment of his own crash, and tells her that whatever came after, in that room Annie knew.

Appearance

A long, half-empty hospital ward with paper cutouts on the walls and monitoring machines around a single occupied crib, a woman dancing slowly with an infant in her arms.

Role

The emotional center of Katia's dream and the memory she treats as her anchor.

Relationships