In addition, doctors generally took some care in choosing their words when discussing outcomes, offering hope when there was hope to offer and trying to temper expectations when things looked grim. As Harry’s wife, Hannah would say anything she could to ease his anxiety. Natalie would have a different perspective: as Hannah’s doctor, the stupidest thing she could do was promise nothing bad would happen. But Hannah knew as well as anyone: patients and their families heard what they wanted to hear.

“I feel better after drinking the water,” she told Harry. This, combined with whatever Natalie had said, seemed to boost his spirits; he rocked back and forth, his eyes brighter.

“Hannah.”

She looked at him.

“Will you pray? For you and me and the baby?”

Unlike Hannah, Harry did not ascribe to a specific religious doctrine. He attended church with her happily enough, but she suspected this stemmed from his enjoyment of the social aspects of gathering with five hundred other people and not from any deep-seated theological hunger. He didn’t pray, and as far as Hannah could tell, he didn’t extend any thought to the week’s biblical sermon outside of the one hour he spent in church on Sundays. They’d danced around the question of faith in the beginning of their relationship, until one day, after a few weeks of dating, she’d decided to be blunt.

“What do you believe?” she asked. They’d sat, surrounded by strangers, in the middle of one of those steak houses where the chefs juggle knives and catch eggs in their hats. To his credit, Harry didn’t feign ignorance at her question. In front of them, their chef’s hands blurred as he made vegetables sizzle and dance. Smoke rose; flames shot up. The diners roared their approval.

“I don’t know what I believe,” he said. “I’ve never been able to extricate my thoughts from the central paradox of it all.”

“What do you mean? The omnipotence paradox?”

He leaned toward her, his eyes alight. “No,” he said. “It seems I’ve already been betrayed by my theological ignorance. What’s the omnipotence paradox?”

“It’s an age-old dilemma: if God is able to accomplish anything, how does that explain something unobtainable?”

“What, like defying the laws of physics?”

“Yes,” she said, “but no. There are debates about logical absurdities, of course, but this concept is more of a riddle. The classic question—reduced to very human terms—is this: could God create a stone too heavy for Him to lift? Either way, the argument goes, there is something He could not accomplish, and therefore there is no such thing as omnipotence.”

“Were you, by any chance,” Harry said, “a philosophy major in college?”

Hannah smiled, nodding her thanks to the chef as he deposited a steaming mound of rice onto her plate. “I was a theology major.”