BASS 2026: Eliot Fox, “The Women’s Hospital” from Ploughshares #162

I wrote this story after the COVID-19 pandemic. Who, we wondered, would come to save us? So I sought solace in the magic of fairy tales. I could change the outcome. Alter the narrative arc. Write my version of a hero and a happy ending. I’m also a doctor writing about doctors – the superhuman things we do for those we’ve just met and the terrible things we do to those we love. I write about what this does to us, and how we move forward. We are all, in the end, only human. Eliot Fox, Contributor Note, Best American Short Stories 2026 Regular readers here may remember I’m a lifelong reader of medical books and stories; fiction, non-fiction, biography, memoir, tales of residency, tales of terminal illnesses, you name it. So I was delighted to see a medical story in this year’s BASS. I don’t remember the last time I saw one, certainly not one as clinically-oriented as this. Don’t be lulled by the soft open… It was spring. The labor suite was busy. It was the miracle of life, over and over…

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