He had stood beside frightened mothers and overwhelmed fathers and newborns who arrived too early, too quiet, or too fragile. People trusted him precisely because he did not shake, did not panic, and did not allow the fear in a room to become his own. That was the thing about Robert Wright — he had made a professional life out of steadiness, and he had been good at it for a very long time.
“Until Delivery Room Four, on a gray winter morning.”
The baby was tiny, angry at the cold, his small fists curled beside his cheeks in the universal posture of the newly arrived. Damp dark hair against a red face. The kind of perfect, furious new life that Robert had witnessed hundreds of times and had learned to receive with professional warmth.
