“Yes, of course-- that's what I'm here for."

“What kills a baby when it’s shot in the head?”

"Excuse me?"

I excuse her-- it's an easy thing to have misheard. "What kills a baby when it's shot in the head?” I repeat. And she repeats it right back, slowly, like she’s learning words in some new language:

"What kills… a baby… when it's shot... in the head?”

I nod— she's got it, yeah.

She reaches for the clipboard I filled out in the lobby before coming in-- the casual little mental-health checklist— “Do you feel like harming yourself or others?”— “How many days in a week do you think about ending your own life?”-- “On a scale of one to ten, how disconnected do you feel from reality?"-- did she miss something?

I reach into my pocket and she flinches— her hand moves away from the clipboard and towards the edge of the counter-- she is getting ready to brace herself for a quick leap up from her chair and a sprint towards the door. We are Americans, after all.

I pull out my phone and she relaxes again, but only very slightly. Her shoulders are pressing into the sides of her neck as I come to stand next to her and show her the video.

“Oh, God,” she says.

“What kills a baby when it's shot in the head?” I ask her.

“Being shot in the head," she says, sharply, before she can stop herself. She's mad at me for showing her this. It's a horrible thing to do to someone, showing them this— but then she shakes her head. “I'm sorry. Excuse me. That was unprofessional.”

I excuse her-- it really is a horrible thing to do to someone.

"Is it blood loss?" I ask. "Is it the brain just being destroyed? How does a baby die when this happens? Is it quick? Is it right away? Or…”-- I let myself trail off.

“Your appointment is for your high triglycerides.”-- she double-checks her clipboard one more time-- yes— "They really are quite elevated, Matt. I’m worried about your risk of heart-attack or stroke. Have you been exercising?”

“Is that how a baby dies? A stroke?”— what exactly is a stroke, anyways?— I realize that I'm not entirely sure. But Dr. Williams frowns.

“A bullet wouldn't cause a stroke-- not like this.”-- she's gone and said something again, before she could stop herself.

“So what would it cause?”

“Your my patient, Matt, not—"

"I made an appointment to talk to you.”

“About your triglycerides.”

"You said you would answer my medical questions.”

“There are people who—" she starts. “I'm not—" she starts again. “There are experts in this. I’m just a GP, I just do internal medicine. I'm not a coroner. I'm not a trauma surgeon.”

"You're who I have,” I tell her. She doesn't understand, but she understands.

“There are a lot of things,” she tells me. "Not a stroke, but blood-loss, yes-- it'll be that a lot of the time, depending on where's hit. Other times, if the brain-stem gets ruined, the heartbeat and breathing will stop.”

“Right."-- she has more to say, I know.

“Sometimes, a baby doesn't die at all. Heart keeps beating, surgeons manage to stop the blood-loss. Irreparable brain-damage, or even brain-death, but not death-death."

“Right.”

“Maybe a bit of the bullet breaks off in the skull and gets lodged somewhere and they miss it," she tells me. “Maybe poisonous lead goes leeching out into the system and nobody notices until it's too late.”

“Right.”

"Or maybe that bit of the bullet comes loose and gets lodged somewhere in the bloodstream, blocks the flow-- could cause a stroke, actually, I was wrong before."

“This baby,” I ask her, without a question-mark, but it's a question.

"This baby,” she says, which isn't an answer, but it's a promise.

We sit together and watch the video, over and over again, on a loop. I am silent, and she is silent. She is silent, and I am silent. Somewhere in the world, the sun is setting. Somewhere in the world, the sun is rising— and right here in this place, the clock on the computer on the desk ticks over from 2:07 to 2:08 and why shouldn't that mater just as much? We are silent, and we are silent.

“Shock,” she finally says, and I don't have the first clue if she's actually meaning it or just saying something, anything, so that she can look up from the video and into my eyes instead-- and then, just as quickly, her gaze flickers away again, into a corner of the wall.

“Shock?"

"Sometimes a body just dies because after what's happened to it, it's just gone and decided that it’s dead. Shock.”

“That's what shock is?”

“No."

We are silent, and we are silent. We are Americans, after all.

I get up from my chair.

“Thank you."

“I have a daughter," she says. "Two years old,” she says.

“I'm so sorry," I say. "I shouldn't have shown you that,” I say.

“It’s my job," she says. “Please try and eat better and get more exercise," she says.

"I will,” I say, and she doesn't have the first clue if I'm actually meaning it or just saying something, anything, so that I can turn away from her and step out into the hallway, walk out through the lobby into the parking lot and slam my face into my steering wheel hard enough to pop the airbag and snap my neck— and what would kill me, then?