Rina looked at the I.V. in her arm. “Nothing, thank you. My doctor told me I can eat solid food for lunch. Not exactly heart-stopping news. But it is the only news I have.”

“I’m glad you are recovering nicely.”

“Thank you for coming down, Rav Schulman. You have always been a rock of support for me and my family.”

“You’re welcome, Rina Miriam. Have you seen your baby?”

“They won’t…I’m still running a fever, and they don’t want the baby to contract anything.”

“It will help when you can hold your baby.”

Rina continued to stare at the acoustical ceiling tiles, wet streaks down her cheek. “I have three healthy children, baruch Hashem. I should be doing better than this.”

“You needn’t reproach yourself for showing human emotion. Nowhere in the Torah does it say we cannot feel sadness or happiness or anger or even doubt. Sarah laughed when Hashem told her she would conceive at the tender age of ninety. Some say it was the laughter of joy. After nine decades of being barren, she was elated at the prospect of having a child. But others say it was laughter of disbelief.” Schulman paused. “Not so hard to imagine her disbelief, nu?”

Rina nodded.

“Hakodesh Baruch Hu Himself tells Sarah of such a miraculous, wonderful event,” the rav continued. “The same Kodesh Baruch Hu who created the world. Is nothing beyond Him? Is there anything that He cannot do? Yet Sarah—a prophetess—still could not think beyond her earthly limitations, and laughed at Hashem’s prophecy. So if she could be human, so can you.”

“I’m angry at God,” Rina whispered.

“I, too, have been angry at God. He is strong. He can take your anger without feeling personally affronted.”

Rina surprised herself by smiling.

Schulman said, “You are not without insight, Rina Miriam. You should be grateful for your three healthy children. And you are grateful. But while I don’t want to put words in your mouth, I would imagine you are saddened by the fact that your family size was determined by a surgeon rather than you. In reality, how much control do we actually have over our lives? Life is a loan from Hashem. We are put here by His design; so shall we leave by His design. So if death, like life, is part of the Eternal’s plan, why do we say tehilim for the sick? Do we really think that our prayers will alter Hashem’s design?”

The rabbi held his finger up in the air.