“Lost a patient.

Go back to sleep, love.” And I believed him, because it was easier to believe him, and because the alternative, that my husband was carrying something so heavy it broke him open in the dark, was too frightening to hold.

I lay back down.

I did not press him.

I told myself that a surgeon carries deaths the way the rest of us carry ordinary sorrows, and that the kindest thing I could do was let him grieve his lost patient in peace and be warm beside him in the morning.

I have thought about that night more than almost any other, in the time since.