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eyes, he became
aware of the room’s unusual quiet. Normally, he could hear both
Annie and the baby breathing. At this particular moment, however,
he could only hear the far-away sound of traffic on Roswell
Road.
    Neal rolled over in Annie’s direction and
listened more carefully. She was facing the other way and he still
could not hear her, or the baby, breathing.
    He moved his head closer to Annie’s.
    At last, he heard the slow, gentle sound of
inhalation and exhalation. His wife was a heavy sleeper—sometimes
when the baby woke up for her nightly feeding, Neal would literally
have to shake Annie awake. He thought it a bit odd for a mother so
concerned about her child’s well being to allow herself to fall
into such a deeply unconscious state.
    Neal sat up in the bed and peered across the
room, at Natasha’s crib. It was positioned at an angle between the
window and Neal’s trophy case, an arrangement that gave Annie the
easiest access to it in the dark, and also minimized the chances of
Neal slamming into it during his nightly treks to the bathroom.
Neal could barely make out the crib’s shadowy form in the darkness.
He strained his ears and listened for any sound that might be
coming from it, breathing or otherwise.
    But there was not a peep.
    Now,
he
was starting to worry about
crib death.
    Neal quietly slipped out of bed. As he
stepped onto the cool hardwood floor, the room appeared to teeter
slightly—the effects of the three beers he had drunk before dinner
hadn’t quite worn off.
    He paused briefly to steady himself, then
took a step towards the crib.
    When his right foot came down, a hot streak
of pain had shot up through the sole—it felt like he had stepped on
an ice pick.
    Neal screamed.
    He lost his balance, falling away from the
crib and landing on the floor, on Annie’s side of the bed. He
slammed against the hardwood with such force that the entire room
shook, the glass in the trophy case rattling. His left shoulder
took the brunt of the impact. For a precious instant, there was
only numbness, but then a wave of pain rose and crested through his
shoulder that was so intense he thought he might pass out.
    “Shit!” he gasped.
    Annie turned on the lamp beside the bed. The
baby started crying.
    “What happened?” she said, in a panicky
screech, one reserved for baby-related emergencies.
    “My foot,” Neal grunted.
    He was still on the floor, writhing around
in pain, alternating between gasping and struggling to see what had
impaled him. Whatever it was, it was still lodged in his foot. As
Neal squirmed, the heavy, offending object banged and scraped
across the floor.
    “Oh my God!” Annie gasped.
    Neal rolled over onto his side, onto his
good shoulder, and stared at his left foot. His tennis trophy was
dangling from it, the one that had broken when he had moved the
trophy case into the bedroom. The top of the trophy—the sharp,
jagged end of the broken-off tennis racquet—was buried deep in his
flesh, imbedded in the tendons.
    “Shit!” Neal yelled again. But this time, he
could hear cold fear in his voice. In his mind’s eye, he could
clearly see the minute details of the tennis trophy’s sheared off
racquet—the crook about halfway down the shaft, the jagged spirals
of metal that fanned out from the end, the little patches of
rust...
    “Get it out of me!” Neal shouted, over the
incessant wailing of the baby.
    Annie leaped down onto the floor, a
terror-stricken look on her face. She reached for the trophy but
couldn’t seem to decide how or where to take hold of it.
    “Jesus!” Neal said in frantic frustration,
shoving himself upright on the floor. Another wave of pain crested
in his shoulder. Bright red blood ran down the trophy’s side and
dripped steadily onto the floor. He started to grab the base of the
trophy with his hand, then changed his mind and pressed on it with
his good foot, holding its heavy base against hardwood.
    Neal closed his eyes and braced himself.
    In one