Then he shook his head, gently, and Martha would remember the gentleness of it, because it was the gentleness of a man choosing his words around something he could already see was going to hurt.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I don’t mean today.”

He turned the monitor toward her.

It was not, she realized, showing an ultrasound.

He had pulled up a record.

And the record said that five weeks earlier, Irene had been seen at this same hospital, in this same department, with these same complaints — a documented visit, with a date and a time and an accompanying adult.

The accompanying adult was listed as her father.