“So your daughter’s taken a shine to her new little sister,” Hendricks said. “That’s nice.”

“Do you think it’s a bad idea for her to become attached to the baby?”

“Only if it’s to the exclusion of her normal activities. Why? Is there a problem?”

Decker rubbed his face. “She seems to be having some conflict with Nurse Bellson, getting in her way, that kind of thing.”

Hendricks rolled his eyes. “Marie’s a damn good nurse, but she does get a bit possessive.”

“Not the first time there’s been a conflict?”

Hendricks shook his head. “You want me to talk to Marie for you?”

“No, no, no. I’ll handle my daughter.”

“Isn’t she going back to college soon?”

Decker nodded.

“So it should work itself out,” Hendricks said.

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

Hendricks yawned. “Sorry. It’s been a long night—a busy night. Not just Rina, others as well. Having babies must be in the air. But I did want to talk to you before I left, tell you what happened…explain a few things.”

Decker waited.

“Rina developed a condition known as accreta.” Hendricks sighed and spelled it. “Basically, the placenta didn’t come out on its own. This can happen for a lot of different reasons, the most common being that the placenta adheres to the uterus. When this occurs, we have to go in and physically remove all of the tissue. Sometimes we can do it with a simple D and C. We go in and scrape the uterus…clean everything out.”

“There’s a ‘but’ to this, isn’t there?” Decker said.

Hendricks’s eyes went from Decker to the chart. Decker felt his stomach churn.

“What?”

“Rina’s hemorrhaging was quite severe; her blood pressure was beginning to drop precipitously. We had no choice but to operate. Once we did, we found out what the problem was. The placenta had grown through the uterus, and that’s what caused all the hemorrhaging. I’m sorry to tell you this, Peter, but Rina had a hysterectomy.”

His words hung in the air. Decker was too stunned to respond. The room suddenly seemed to take on motion, walls pulsating, the bookshelves undulating. Nausea crept from his stomach to his throat. He swallowed to keep from retching and covered his mouth with his hand.

Hendricks fiddled with the chart. “I know this must be quite a shock to you—”

“Couldn’t you just have cut it out?” Decker blurted. “The placenta…couldn’t you have surgically removed it?”

“No—”

“You had to take the whole uterus out?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand—”

“Peter—”

“I mean, isn’t that what surgery is? Cutting things out? Cutting selective things out?”

Hendricks didn’t answer.

Decker said, “I just don’t understand why…”