The blue plastic brush slipped from my fingers and splashed into the soapy water, spraying gray foam across the clean nipples lined up on the counter. It was exactly two in the morning, and the kitchen light felt like a needle behind my eyes. I reached down into the tepid water, searching for the small rubber rings that sealed the bottles. My fingers brushed the bottom of the sink, finding only the empty plastic rims of the forty-eight-dollar formula cans I had discarded before midnight.
Twenty-four bottles a day. That was the count now, a constant cycle of soaking, scrubbing, and sterilizing that left my fingers raw and my thumbs aching. I picked up a nipple, running my thumb over the small hole to make sure the latex had not torn, then placed it onto the drying rack with the others.
My silver wedding band lay on the wooden kitchen table, sitting right next to the salt shaker where I had left it to keep the dish soap from dulling the metal. It was a simple band, thin and scratched from three years of garden work and house cleaning.
A sudden burst of static hissed from the baby monitor beside the microwave.
