I didn't know where I was going. I didn't have a plan. I just needed to be here, in the place where it had happened, and to understand something I couldn't make sense of.
"Dr. Reed?"
I turned. A woman in scrubs was watching me from near the elevators, her face creased with surprise and concern. She was in her fifties, gray streaking through dark hair that was pulled back in a practical bun. Her eyes were warm, familiar, and it took me a moment to place her.
"Cathy?"
"It's been years." She crossed the lobby toward me, her sneakers squeaking against the floor. "What are you doing back here?"
Cathy Bells. She'd been a labor and delivery nurse when I'd worked here. We'd worked together a handful of times when trauma cases had intersected with obstetrics, and she'd always struck me as the kind of person you could trust with your worst secrets.
"I needed to see some records," I said. "From when I worked here."
"Records?" Her brow furrowed.
I didn't know how to answer that or to explain the piece of paper burning a hole in my pocket.
Cathy studied my face for a long moment. Then her expression shifted, understanding dawning slow.
"You found out about the pregnancy."
I went cold. "What?"
"Calla's pregnancy." Cathy's voice was gentle, the way you'd speak to someone who'd just received a terminal diagnosis. "That's why you're here, isn't it? Someone finally told you."
I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. The lobby noise faded to a dull roar, and all I could see was Cathy's face, her eyes full of sorrow that had been waiting five years to be shared.
"You knew?" The words scraped out of me. "You knew about it?"
"I was there." She touched my arm, her grip firm and grounding. "Come with me. This isn't a conversation to have in the lobby."
She led me through corridors I half-remembered, past nurses' stations and patient rooms and all the places where Calla and I had built a life together. We ended up in a small break room on the third floor, empty except for a coffee maker and a few worn chairs.
Cathy closed the door behind us.
"Sit down. You look like you're about to fall over."
I sat. My legs gave out more than I chose to, my body collapsing into the chair like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Cathy sat across from me, her hands folded in her lap, her face full of compassion that came from decades of watching people receive the worst news of their lives.
"Tell me," I urged. "Tell me everything."
She was quiet for a moment, gathering her words.
“I remember because I thought it was strange,” Cathy began. “Dr. Karras never took lunch breaks. She was always in surgery or in the clinic or buried in research. But that day, she walked into labor and delivery looking like a ghost."
I pressed my hands against my thighs, trying to stop them from shaking.
"She'd been spotting for a few days but hadn't told anyone. By the time she came to us, she already knew something was wrong. We did an ultrasound and..." Cathy paused, her voice catching. "There was no heartbeat. The baby had stopped developing about a week earlier. Her body just hadn't recognized it yet."
"How far along was she?"
"Eight to nine weeks." Cathy's eyes were wet. "She sat there staring at the screen while we told her, and she didn't cry or say anything. She just asked when we could schedule the procedure."
"The D&C." She exhaled. "That same afternoon. We had an opening, and she insisted on getting it done immediately. I offered to call you and told her you'd want to be there, and that she shouldn't go through this alone. But she said no."
"W-Why?" I choked out.
