I showed up at the hospital to surprise my husband during his shift. But the second one of his coworkers saw me, all the color left his face. Then his eyes filled with tears. “He hasn’t said a word to you, has he?” Ben and I had been married eleven years, and for every one of those years, I had shared him with the hospital. He was a remarkably gifted surgeon.

Instead, a strange numbness took hold of my voice.

“Everything here is perfectly fine, so go do your job and take care of your patient.”

“Love you, Hannah.”

“Love you too.”

I hung up, laid the phone in my lap, and looked straight into Paul’s eyes to ask the one question that mattered.

“Did Brian really kill that boy through negligence?”

Paul opened his mouth to reply, but shut it again at once as his throat closed up.

The heavy silence dragged on between us for five excruciating seconds while the air conditioning hummed overhead.