Three Mothers and a Father

A working mother,

Concerned for her only child,

The precious child she fought hard to unnaturally conceive.

The child has not been well.

She places her child in my care.

That child the autopsy report would eventually describe down to the fingernails.

(“Short and clean”)

The mother, standing in her tears,

Robbed of motherhood by an unknown force after induction.

I, too, am a working mother…a doctor.

Behind my mask, I battled the unknown force for over an hour.

I lost.

So did she.

There is actually a registry for these cases?

Each case becomes a number.

Each number has a mother…and a doctor…and tears.

Could I stay behind my mask for a few more months?

An astute attorney.

A shark? Perhaps…but a mother shark.

And she is MY shark.

Somehow she is familiar with the cries of a mother.

Maybe someday she could detail her story to me,

The way she had me detail my story to her.

Did I see some of her tears at that first meeting?

Some months after the burial, yet before the case settled,

I learned that she conceived again, this time in the natural way.

Through tears, my shark hears me say,

“Dear Father, thank you for blessing her again with motherhood.”