His patient’s face wouldn’t leave his mind.
Disturbed, Nathan rolled the oats and tried to think of something else. But no matter how hard he tried, her face kept surfacing.
His patient from earlier that day—a bubbly woman, especially pleased to have her child—had lost her baby under his care.
"The baby’s gone," he had told her, his palms gently pressing the curve of her stomach. "His head was crushed right here. It was a delicate part. I’m sorry.”
Nathan had said the words clinically and carefully detached, just as he had been trained to do. But inside, he died a little more when he saw the pain in the woman’s eyes.
She was shaking her head at him, whispering. “No, please. That’s not true. There has to be another way, please.”
There wasn’t. She had lost the baby, and that was it.
