He tries to summon his patients, the people he’d once helped, though can conjure them only fleetingly before it’s Cora’s bruised face again. His daughter not meeting his eye. The wails of his infant son. And this is the truth of it. The people he was meant to love, he has only hurt. He cries out then, a guttural sound. Because it’s so clear. He had one life. And he could have spent it differently.
