I should have hesitated.

Doctors dating patients was complicated. I knew that. I’d worked in social services long enough to know about power and boundaries and all the ways people get hurt.

But I liked him. I liked him more than I’d liked anyone in a long time.

“You’d have to stop being my doctor,” I said.

“Done,” he said, so fast I laughed.

“Then yes.”

He transferred my care to Dr. Lim the following week. True to his word.

Dating him felt easy. That’s the only way I can describe it. Easy, like breathing.

Nigel described the world to me without pity. When we went to a restaurant, he’d read me the menu without me asking, and he’d add his own commentary. “The salmon comes with something called a citrus foam, which sounds like a mistake.” When we walked in the park, he’d tell me what the people around us were doing. “There’s a man over there walking a cat on a leash. The cat looks humiliated.”

He let me cook, even when I burned things. Especially when I burned things. He’d just open the window and say, “Smells like dedication.”

He memorized how I took my coffee. One sugar, a splash of milk, never too hot. And he’d place the mug exactly three inches from my right hand, every single time, so I’d know exactly where it was.

Nobody had ever done that for me.

It sounds so small. It wasn’t small.

There was only one strange thing, early on.

About two months after we started dating, we were sitting on my couch. I asked if I could touch his face. I asked everyone I got close to. It’s how I learn people.

“Of course,” he said.

I traced his forehead. His cheekbones. His nose, which was a little crooked. His mouth.

And then, above his left eyebrow, I felt something. A small line of raised skin. Thin, about half an inch long.

“What’s this?” I asked.

He went very still under my fingers.

“Old scar,” he said. “From when I was a kid.”

“What happened?”

A pause.

“I fell,” he said. “Playground.”

“Kids are dangerous,” I said, smiling.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “They are.”

Then he took my hand and kissed my palm and changed the subject.

I didn’t think about it again for twenty years.

Two years later, we got married.

By then he’d been out of my medical care for almost two years. Dr. Lim had taken over completely. We’d made sure of it.

The night before the wedding, I traced his face with my fingertips again. We were sitting on the back steps of the little house we’d just rented. I could smell the honeysuckle along the fence.

“You have a strong jaw,” I said softly.

“Is that good?” he asked.

“I think so. You feel steady.”

He kissed my palm.

“I am,” he said.

We had our son, Ethan, two years after the wedding. Then our daughter, Rose, three years after that.

I learned their faces through touch. Every day, as they grew, I’d trace them. The soft, round baby cheeks that slowly sharpened. Ethan’s nose, which turned out like his father’s, a little crooked. Rose’s dimple on her left side only.

“What color are her eyes?” I asked Nigel, the day Rose was born.

“Brown,” he said. “Like mine. But lighter. Like coffee with too much milk.”

“So exactly how I like it.”

He laughed. “Exactly how you like it.”

They were good kids. They were never embarrassed by me, not even as teenagers. Ethan used to read me the comics on Sunday mornings when he was seven, doing all the voices. Rose, when she was five, would take my hand at the grocery store and narrate everything in a loud, bossy voice. “Cereal, Mom. Now we’re passing cereal. Don’t touch the cereal, it’s not on the list.”

We were happy. I want you to understand that. We were really, truly happy.