“You must understand, the level of hemorrhaging, Dr. Templeton…”

“The speed of the blood loss…”

“Highly unusual…perhaps her family history?”

“After a certain point, heart failure cannot be prevented.”

“Deeply sorry for your loss.”

And Peter had nodded, yes, yes, he understood, of course, they’d done all they could. He’d watched them wheel Alex away, her ashen face covered with a bloodstained hospital sheet. He stood there, breathing in and out. But of course it wasn’t real. How could it be? His Alex wasn’t dead. The whole thing was preposterous. Women didn’t die in childbirth, for God’s sake, not in this day and age. This was 1984. This was New York City.

The shrill, plaintive cry seemed to come out of nowhere. Even in his profound state of shock, some primal instinct would not allow Peter to ignore it. Suddenly someone was handing him a tiny swaddled bundle, and the next thing Peter knew, he was gazing into his daughter’s eyes. In an instant, every last brick of the protective wall he’d been building around his heart crumbled to dust. For one blissful moment, his heart swelled with pure love.

Then it shattered.

Wrenching the baby out of his arms, Nurse Matthews thrust her at an orderly.

“Take her to the nursery. And get a psych up here, right now. He’s losing it.”

Nurse Matthews was good in a crisis. But inside she was riddled with guilt. She should never have let him hold the child. What was she thinking? After what that poor man had just been through? He might have killed her.

In her defense, though, Peter had seemed so stable. Fifteen minutes ago he was signing forms and talking to Dr. Farrar and…

Peter’s screams grew louder. Outside in the corridor, visitors exchanged worried glances and craned their necks to get a better view through the glass window of the delivery room.

Hands were on him again. Peter felt the sharp prick of a needle in his arm. As he lost consciousness, he knew that the peaceful blackness of the well would never return to him.