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her.
    Lauren dozed off until a swirl of fabric brushed across her shoulder and she blinked. It was the Ethiopian woman stepping out of David’s office. Lauren stood, pushed open the door, and found David sitting at his desk in the examining room, his head bowed (as usual) over his papers, his eyebrows furrowed in concentration, his tousled hair dark against his white doctor’s jacket. He looked up distractedly through his glasses, about to greet his next patient, and then a puzzled look crossed his usually serene face.
    â€œSweetie!” He took off his glasses, raising his hands in disbelief. “What are you doing here?”
    â€œI came to surprise you,” Lauren said. “Maya is at the gan, and Aviva is taking Yael from the nursery until four today as a special treat. Until four! When I start work at the hospital again, I’ll almost never get to see you, so I came today. Carpe diem, as they say. Seize the day.”
    â€œI’d love to hang out with you now, but did you see how crazy it is out there?”
    â€œI can’t believe how many people fit into your waiting room.” Lauren sat down. “Like a trick car in the circus.”
    â€œIt’s been nonstop all morning.” He shuffled the papers on his desk.
    The shades were pulled up to let in the morning sun. Lauren looked around at the Detecto scale, the wastebasket, the sink in the corner with a pink bead about to drip from the soap dispenser. On the medical cot covered with creased thin paper wasthe stethoscope she had bought as a birthday present for David, his name engraved in the silver. Lauren joked, “Who would have thunk that eight years of medical school gets you this?”
    David’s expression soured. “What did you expect? Your father’s cardiology practice with a secretary and a coffee table piled high with magazines?”
    Lauren had hoped to have some quality time alone with David and immediately wished she hadn’t said that. She almost wished that she hadn’t even come to his office.
    â€œThat Ethiopian woman and her son walked for hundreds of miles to get to Addis Ababa, and one of his sisters died along the way,” David said.
    â€œThat is awful.” Then Lauren couldn’t help herself and blazed on, “But honestly, I wanted to have a minivacation from all of life’s problems for just a little while.” She fiddled with the wedding band around her finger. Three interlocking bands, three types of gold. David had paid a pretty sum for the ring at Cartier. Lauren knew it was an extravagance, but wasn’t she allowed to spoil herself even if other people were suffering? Or was it her obligation to suffer, too? The gold flashed in the dull light. David’s cell phone rang. He let it ring and ring.
    â€œI’m sorry.” His voice sounded sad.
    â€œNo, I’m sorry.” Lauren offered David a genuine smile from her heart. She loved him and her daughters. She liked her work at the maternity ward. She liked the different pieces of her life, but they somehow could not complete the puzzle. Was she happy some of the time?
    She thought of her father. “Which percent of the time?” hewould have asked, pushing his wire-rimmed glasses over the bridge of his hooked nose to study his only child. Then he would have continued in the same academic tone, “How would you measure happiness?”
    â€œThe same way you measure suffering,” Lauren might have said. And wasn’t her suffering still bad to her, even if it wasn’t as terrible as someone else’s? Maybe Lauren was feeling a wave of homesickness, something that came over her on a regular basis, as David knew. Like her downhearted mood before her period each month. “Everything here is still so different.” Lauren paused. “Even at the post office, with Gabriel standing at the counter licking people’s stamps because they don’t have adhesives