He looked down at the floor.
“And I believed him,” he said. “And I was a coward. I was twenty-four years old, and I’d spent my whole life wanting to be a doctor, and I let that man take my son away to save my own career.”
“But you were there,” I said. “The night he was born. You took the picture.”
“I asked to be on call that night,” he said. “I traded shifts with three people to make sure. I knew when she was due. I knew where they were bringing her.” His voice broke. “I couldn’t be her husband. I couldn’t be his father. But I could be in the building. That was all I could do.”
He wiped his eyes.
“I stayed,” he said. “At this hospital. For fifty-one years. Everybody told me I should go somewhere bigger. Cleveland. Columbus. Johns Hopkins wanted me once. But I never left. Because this was the last place I ever saw him.”
