unpreparing

I tell my boyfriend the news and his eyes light up. What if, he says, what if someone kidnapped the baby? For ransom, or to sell it on the black market? What if you tripped and fell and landed on your stomach?

I don't know, I tell him. He turns on the news, says, Come on, get to the terrorist stuff.

When he leaves to get coffee I imagine him spilling the coffee on himself, getting third-degree burns that fuse his fingers together. I imagine him getting stuck in the elevator, the cables breaking and the elevator plummeting him to his death, though the hospital is only three floors high. I wonder if it's possible that an air bubble got injected into his bloodstream in the crash somehow, that it will reach his heart and he'll go down, his heart exploding like a firecracker in an apple. - Linsay Hunter, "Unpreparing" (which you can read here) from her book Daddy's (part of my 32 Books For My 32nd Year "challenge.")