My husband br0ke my ri:bs and left me stru:ggl:ing to breathe on the kitchen floor while our five-year-old son watched. Instead of cr:yi:ng, my little boy picked up my phone and called the one person my husband never wanted involved. “Grandpa, come now. Mama can’t bre@the.” Minutes later, my husband returned and saw the phone in our son’s hands. “Who did you call?” he demanded. Then my father’s voice came through the speaker: “Me.”

“Clean yourself up,” he said. “And teach him not to cr:y like that.”

Then he removed my keys from the hook and walked out. The refrigerator kept humming, the kitchen light buzzed above me, and Noah stared at me with the frightened clarity of a child who knew his mother was not okay.

He pressed the call button beside the fishing-boat emoji next to my father’s name. Dad answered on the second ring.

“Grandpa,” Noah said, his voice shaking. “Come now. Mama can’t bre@the.”

My father’s voice immediately sharpened through the speaker. “Is she ble:eding?”

“No,” Noah answered after looking closely at me. “But she sounds br00ken.”

Br0ken. It was the word I had spent years avoiding by calling myself tired, stressed, clumsy, or private.

Dad told Noah to place the phone by my mouth, then ordered me not to move. “Tap once if Evan did this,” he said.