Signing Away the Doctor's Wife

Harvey James is the youngest attending physician in the OB-GYN department, and in three years of marriage he has saved countless other people's children. When his wife, Lena Swanson, begins bleeding in the small hours, a neighbor rushes her to the hospital. She calls him seventeen times; on the eighteenth he says Joyce Fox is unstable and he cannot get away. The signature line on the consent form stays empty, and the baby is gone.

The next morning Lena sees Harvey pass the hallway with his arm around Joyce Fox, then he asks why she was admitted to his department at all. He arranges a transfer to a neighboring branch, insisting Joyce is frail and cannot handle stress, while Lena has just lost the child. When Joyce brings date oatmeal the nurse had warned against, Harvey only tells Lena not to take it out on her.

Left alone, Lena folds the unsigned consent form into her bag and dials a number she has not called in a long while, asking Claudia about a residency slot at Southport Women's & Children's.