The Nurse's Pregnancy Miracle. Ann McIntosh

came across to the desk, not even when she said, “Well, if you need anything—an ear, or a hand—just let me know.”

      Her compassion was almost his undoing, and he was thankful when the door to the exam room opened and Douglas Comstock came in to join them.

      After Nychelle had taken their rather subdued patient off to have some of the tests run, David made his way back to his own office. Dropping into his chair, he scrubbed both hands over his face, as though to awaken himself from the aching sorrow wrapped around him like a pall. He should have taken the day off, but the thought of being at home without anything to do had had zero appeal, and there was nowhere he could think of going that would have been any better. Work seemed the best way to deal with the pain.

      How tempted he’d been to tell Nychelle what today was. Something in her empathetic gentle gaze, the timbre of her voice, had made him want to share with her that which he never shared. Had never been tempted to share, neither wanting to worsen the wound nor, conversely, diminish the loss. As if saying the words Today was the day my baby girl, my Natalie, was born way too early and didn’t survive would be a betrayal of the love he still felt ten years later.

      She had been born at just shy of twenty weeks. As a doctor he would call it a miscarriage or, worse, a spontaneous abortion. As a man, Natalie’s father, he couldn’t bring himself to think of it that way. It was simply her birthday, the day he’d truly learned, for the first time, what love was. And it was also the day he’d learned the immensity of the agony love could cause. The irrevocable, heartbreaking loss hadn’t become easier to bear over time. Probably never would.

      Taking a breath, he held it for a moment and then blew it out. Leaning back in his chair, he wished he were still in Chicago so he could visit her grave, the way he had every other year. When he’d been offered the job in Florida he’d thought about moving away from her and almost refused. Yet he’d known it was time to move on—not from her, but in his professional life. He’d reassured himself he didn’t need to be there to remember her, to miss her, but he hadn’t realized how bad today would be, the pain magnified by distance and the strangeness of his new life.