Nineteen Minutes

Nineteen Minutes, by Jodi Picoult, is eight of your worst nightmares, in ascending order, by my personal scale:

1. You did your job badly as a judge, since you were not really objective but you were too subjective to understand the difference between subjective and objective (Alex).
   
2. You got caught between your professional and your personal obligations and each prevented you from doing your best job at each (Patrick).
3. You raised your children the best way you knew how, but it wasn't good enough to prevent the society that really raised your child from turning that child into a monster and then maiming and killing it (various parents of slain teenagers).
4. You tried your best to know the truth about what mattered to you, but somehow the truth slipped between the facts (Lewis).
5. You tried to be as humane as you could in every circumstance, from your relationships with your family to your relationships to your clients (women in labor), but somehow, they went their own way and left you behind (Lacey).
6. From the time you were a child, you were too good for this world and wanted to be left alone, but they provoked and provoked and wouldn't stop provoking. Finally, you did what they wanted you to do (Peter).
7. You were only as good as you had to be and then you were never good enough, but no one but you ever had to know this unless by some terrible accident, the truth came out. Then, the truth came out (Josie).
8. You were a casual mother, a phone it in mother, a hope it works out, but not giving it much thought mother. Then, when it looked like you had lost your child and it looked like she was never going to come back, never, you got a second chance. And you didn't have any idea what to do with it (Alex).