When the Truth Cuts Deep

Three months pregnant, a wife lies on the operating table while her husband, a doctor named Chuck Gross, performs her abortion himself. He refuses her a pain-relief drip, telling the nurse she is good at enduring pain, and lets Valerie Green sit beside him to watch. When Valerie asks to see the fetus, he blocks the trash can, then gives in and lets her look. Afterward he throws a few tissues at his wife and leaves with Valerie.

At home she learns he never came back, and a photo of Valerie's candlelight dinner shows half of a man's hand wearing the wedding ring she and Chuck bought together. His mother, Marge Brown, had never liked her and preferred Valerie; a pastor's warning that the baby's fortune opposed Chuck's drove him to end the pregnancy.

Valerie and Chuck were childhood sweethearts, and since her return everything has changed. When he finally comes home, he admits he spent the night at Valerie's place and calls his wife paranoid, showing no guilt at all.