«What was your gynecologist thinking?!» the doctors shouted during the birth of the 56-year-old woman..

We overlooked the moment when she turned from a good girl into a monster. Mike was even more upset. He passed by his daughter, unable to talk to her now.

He sank onto the bed, unable to stand on his feet anymore. He couldn’t fall asleep either. Claudia stood before his eyes so clearly and vividly, as if she were in the room with him at that moment.

Mike never even thought he loved his wife so much. Endlessly. True, he rarely told Claudia about it.

Or rather, never. Except perhaps on the wedding day. Claudia was always there, and Mike lived behind her like behind a stone wall.

He didn’t notice her beauty, kindness, generosity. And now Claudia was suddenly not by his side. His chest was immediately squeezed by unbearably aching feelings of loneliness, hopelessness, and uselessness to anyone in this world.

If only he knew that hopelessness was in the air not only in his thoughts, but also in the operating room, where doctors fought for Claudia’s and her children’s health. The woman was still unconscious. But the operation was successful.

Now the tiny bodies of the two seven-month-old baby girls would be examined by doctors and midwives, then placed in a special unit where their lives would be supported. The young doctor Ethan Zane couldn’t hold back and exclaimed. Why did she get pregnant at 56 and not have an abortion? What a fool, completely crazy.

What was her gynecologist looking at? You have to be such an ignoramus to make a granny give birth, and prematurely at that. Don’t even say it, she’s hanging by a thread herself, and the kids, if they survive, will definitely have pathologies, no need for a fortune teller, it’s clear, his friend and colleague seconded.

Shut up, you suckers, expressing yourselves like that in the presence of the woman in labor, aren’t you ashamed, the gray-haired doctor Leonard Anderson was indignant.

The chief doctor of the maternity hospital played it safe and threw almost half the staff at Claudia’s operation, after all, not every day do ladies of respectable age give birth. Well, Leonard Anderson, we didn’t say anything, just the truth, the young generation of doctors babbled. Besides, the woman in labor doesn’t hear anything anyway.

They didn’t even think that Claudia, emerging for a few seconds from the darkness into reality, caught the meaning of their words. Immediately her body twitched as if in convulsions, and a few seconds later, a piercing scream from one of the midwives rang out. «Leonard Anderson, the woman’s pressure has dropped sharply…»

Lord, exactly, Lera, and the heartbeat is weak, we could lose her any moment. Urgently to resuscitation measures. The whole staff rushed to help, but the irreparable happened.

Twenty minutes later, Claudia Thompson was gone. Her body couldn’t withstand such hellish strain. Tears welled up in the eyes of the midwives and Leonard Anderson, and the young doctors guiltily backed to the wall.

But, as they say, trouble doesn’t come alone. A few hours later, the prophetic predictions of one of the doctors came true. Claudia’s children indeed had pathologies.

One of the baby girls had an underdeveloped optic nerve. She practically saw nothing. And the other had a severe heart defect.

She won’t live even two months, the doctors predicted. The news of Claudia Thompson’s death and the terrible diagnoses of the children was devastating for Mike. No, he didn’t take his own life, but his brain forever refused to accept what happened…