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.

“A careless doctor doesn’t sit in a stranger’s living room crying for hours over a child he couldn’t save, Mrs.

Carter.”

“Why did you come over to my house this morning, Carmen?”

She opened her purse and laid a folded legal letter on the table between us.

“His private lawyer dropped him as a client last week because Brian couldn’t keep up with the growing legal retainers anymore.”

Carmen leaned in, her voice shaking with conviction.

“The final license revocation hearing is scheduled ten days from now, and he plans to walk into that room all by himself against Walsh’s defense team.”

I stared at the law firm’s formal letterhead, feeling the pressure of the clock ticking down.