Each time that Linda heard her daughter cough it felt like another nail was being nailed into her own coffin. It had been a week since she had spent even a moment alone. Each day, hour, even minute she felt tethered to another human being. Each family member had been sick, each one worse than the one before and now, at last, the baby. Up some nights every half hour, the baby coughed, cried, and whined. She wouldn't take any medicine without a scream, she wanted to be held constantly and each time Linda held her she got a wet cough in the face. There was a feeling of dread that came over her, like a dark, looming cloud that offered nothing good. She knew, deep down inside that when everyone was all better, she would be sick and then everyone would be on their way to their own lives and leave her to take care of self. They would have the same expectations they always had, and none of them would offer to help.

There were days that she wondered how she got here. When did this happen to her? She could remember the beginning, getting married, having each baby, but she couldn't remember one day being the mother of such a large family. She remembered being pregnant with her fourth child and being at a store looking to purchase a large pan and another woman, much older than Linda, was also buying pan and made a suggestion to Linda. "Thank you, but I need a pan that will be able to hold food for a family of six," she replied to the woman's suggestion of a pan that was much too small. She was shocked to hear it, to actually hear, in her own voice, "Family of six". It was so foreign to her. Going from one to two, or two to three, was not such a big deal, but going from three children to four children and bringing the family up to six, was almost too much for her. She ruminated on it for days. Finding herself feeling as though she was standing dangerously close to a steep cliff. Years earlier, when as a child she had visited the Grand Canyon with her parents her father told her a horribly frightening story designed to scare the crap out of his children so that they would not get too close to the edge. It worked, preventing Linda from even wanting to get out of the car. Linda felt the same way this time. Only this time, it was too late. She was already at the cliff and could only hope to keep a balance that could take all of her strength to maintain.

It wasn't that she didn't want to be a mother, or be a wife, it was just that she wanted to be. She felt that she had lost her identity and it scared her. Being with this sick baby for a week magnified her feelings of having no control over her own life.

"Could you imagine being sequestered for weeks or even months?" she had asked a friend during the OJ Simpson trial. Years later she would think about that question and the irony that came with it.