The first thing I saw when I woke up was the ceiling.

White tiles with little holes in them, the kind you only see in hospitals and school basements. A fluorescent light humming somewhere to my left. A machine beeping slowly beside my head.

The second thing I saw was a man in blue scrubs leaning over me.

He was young, maybe thirty, with dark hair and tired brown eyes. He had a stethoscope around his neck and a tablet in his hand. He was reading something on the tablet and frowning a little.

“Ms. Mercer?” he said gently. “Can you hear me? You’re in recovery. The surgery went well.”

I tried to say something. My throat was too dry.

He leaned closer to check the IV in my arm.

And a silver cross slipped out from under the collar of his scrubs.

It swung on a thin chain, right in front of my face, maybe twelve inches away. It caught the light from the fluorescent tube above us.

I recognized it before my brain could catch up.

The tiny nick on the left arm of the cross. A little notch in the silver, like somebody had bitten it.

It was the same cross I’d tucked into my newborn son’s blanket thirty-one years earlier.

“Where did you get that?” I whispered.

The doctor looked down at the cross hanging from his neck. Then back at me.

He stopped moving completely.

Then he asked me a question I’ll never forget as long as I live.

“Did anyone ever tell you,” he said slowly, “what really happened to your baby?”