To carry the truth to someone is its own kind of burden, and he carried mine.

Chapter 8 — Six Months

“Clara,” David said.

“Marcus isn’t working today.

He isn’t in surgery.

He hasn’t performed a surgery in six months.”

I stared at him, and a strange hollow laugh came out of me, because what he was saying was so plainly impossible that it could not be anything but a mistake.

“That’s not true,” I said.