“We’re tracking some clusters of similar cases, but there’s nothing I can tell you yet,” Kira said, adding, “I hope it’s not related.”

This reassured no one. A somber silence descended upon the group, broken by the cry of a baby. Compton jumped up and returned with her toddler in her arms, settling back into her chair with his downy head nestled in the crook of her elbow. She bent her head over him, making little shushing sounds.

“Should we wrap up?” Hannah asked, as quietly as she could.

Compton raised her head. “No. He’s asleep. I’ll put him back in a second.” But she didn’t move. “Hannah? Do you remember that first baby you delivered in medical school?”

“Of course!”

“Will you tell me that story?”

They’d heard most of each other’s stories ten thousand times by now, but Hannah launched into this one again, puzzled but pleased that Compton would want to hear it again.

She’d been standing in the hall. This was back in the days before posh L&D suites and Press Ganey patient consumer surveys and aromatherapy and water births and all the rest of the stuff hospitals had been doing to market themselves less as deliverers of medical expertise and more as deliverers of resort-quality birth experiences. Back then they had separate labor, delivery, and recovery rooms, all sporting a certain utilitarian dreariness. Even for a teaching hospital, it was a bit on the grim side.

Hannah, dressed in her short white medical student coat, had completed her first clinical lesson in patient care—how to read a rhythm strip—and had found herself lounging against a greenish cement wall, staring at the sample printout she’d been given and fervently wishing for some labor to commence so she could put her newfound knowledge to use. The attending physicians and the residents, on the other hand, were all fervently wishing for a lull so they could score some breakfast before the chaos began, and seeing how there wasn’t anyone in active labor at the moment, they’d all vanished as soon as the lecture ended.

“. . . and the residents were getting coffee or something,” Hannah said now. She waited as Compton held up a finger; she stood and moved out of view. She returned a moment later without her baby and nodded for Hannah to continue.

“Then this man poked his head out into the hall and said, ‘Doctor, come quick!’ I didn’t answer, because of course I didn’t think he was talking to me. But he was hollering and pointing, so I checked behind me and there was no actual doctor, so I ran in and looked at his wife’s strip. It did not look like contractions, so I was calm and reassuring, just like they said to be. ‘It’s going to be a while, probably,’ I said. ‘Can I get anyone anything?’ But the man was still yelling, and the woman was carrying on too, which made it hard to hear.” Hannah paused and took a decorous sip of her water. It could be hard to gauge someone’s interactivity on a videoconference, but Compton appeared to be listening intently, staring at the screen with her wineglass in her hand.