“OK, Candy,” said the nurse who’d been helping Dr. Burnham. “We’d like you to scoot over here.” She was on the other side of the operating table, which she patted encouragingly. For a moment Candy felt irritation at being ordered about. But the feeling passed quickly. She really had no choice. She was pregnant with an eighteen-week-old fetus. She preferred to use the word “fetus.” It was easier to think about than “baby” or “child.” Dutifully, Candy moved to the operating table.

Another nurse pulled up Candy’s gown and attached minute electrodes to her chest. A beeping noise began, but it took Candy a while to realize that the sound corresponded to the beating of her heart.

“I’m going to tilt the table,” said Dr. Burnham as Candy felt herself angle so that her feet were lower than her head. In that position she could feel the weight of her uterus in her pelvis. At the same time she felt a fluttering which she had noticed over the previous week and which she thought might be the fetus moving within her womb. Thankfully, it stopped quickly.

The next instant the door to the corridor burst open and Dr. Lawrence Foley backed in, holding up his dripping hands just like surgeons did in the movies. “Well,” he said in his peculiarly inflectionless voice, “how’s my girl?”

“I don’t feel the anesthetic,” said Candy anxiously. She was relieved to see Dr. Foley. He was a tall man with thin features and a long straight nose that sharply tented the front of his surgical mask. Soon all Candy could see of his face were his gray-green eyes. The rest was hidden, including his silver-white hair.

Candy had been seeing Dr. Foley on an infrequent basis for her routine gynecological care and had always liked and trusted the man. She had not had a checkup for eighteen months prior to her pregnancy, and when she had gone to his office a few weeks ago she had been surprised to see how much Dr. Foley had changed. She’d remembered him as being outgoing and not without a touch of dry humor. Candy wondered how much of his “new” personality was due to his disapproval of her unmarried pregnant state.