“You don’t look that great, considering that you’re young and beautiful and have a gorgeous baby,” he teased. He was happy for them, and he had been immensely relieved when Gayle told him they’d adopted a baby. He had seen what distress she’d been in, and he had been deeply sorry for them.
“Why don’t you go get a blood test?” He tried again, because he’d promised Andy, but it was obvious to him that Diana was stubborn.
“What’s that going to tell me, Jack? That I’m tired? I already know that. I’ve had enough tests to last me a lifetime.”
“This isn’t the same thing, Diana, and you know that. I’m talking about a checkup. That’s nothing.”
“It may be nothing to you, but it’s something to me.”
“Then why don’t you come see me? I can do a simple blood test, make sure you don’t have some kind of a low-grade infection that’s wearing you down, see if you’re anemic, give you some vitamins. No big deal.”
“Maybe,” she said hesitantly, but before they left that afternoon, he pressed her again.
“I want to see you in my office tomorrow.”
It seemed dumb to her, but she felt so rotten the next morning when Andy left for work, that she ended up throwing up for an hour, and lying half passed out on the bathroom floor while the baby cried lustily in the bedroom. “Okay,” she whispered as she lay there, feeling like she was going to die, “I’ll go … I’ll go …” And an hour later, she and Hilary were in Jack’s office.
Reluctantly, she admitted to him what had happened that morning, and it had happened before. She had a vague suspicion that, after all the agonies of the year before, she might have wound up with an ulcer.
He glanced at her as she explained, and then asked her a few questions, about the color of the vomitus, did it look like coffee grounds, had she ever thrown up blood, to all of which she said no, and he nodded.
“What’s all that about?” she asked anxiously, while Hilary slept peacefully in her basket.
“I just want to check your ulcer theory out, and make sure you’ve not vomiting either old or fresh blood.” He was a gynecologist, but he wasn’t totally unfamiliar with these kinds of questions. “If we suspect an ulcer, you should have an upper GI series. But let’s not worry about that yet.” He drew some blood and made some notes, listened to her chest, and then palpated her stomach and lower abdomen. And then he looked at her, over his glasses. “What’s this?” he asked, feeling a small mass low down in her belly. “Was that there before?”
“I don’t know.” She looked frightened and reached down to touch it. It had been there for a while, she knew, but she couldn’t remember how long, weeks, months, days. She was so tired she just couldn’t think of when she first felt it. “Not long. Maybe since we had the baby.” He frowned at her again, felt some more, and then sat down across from her in a chair with an odd expression.
“When was your last period?” he asked, and she tried to think. It had been a while, not that it made a difference.
“I don’t know,” she tried to think. “Maybe not since Hilary came, a couple of months maybe. Why, is something really wrong?” Maybe now, in addition to all the other things wrong with her reproductive tract, she had a tumor. “Do you think it’s a growth of some kind?” Oh, Christ, that was all she needed. Maybe she had cancer. What would she ever say to Andy? Sweetheart … I’m really sorry … but I’m going to die and leave you with this baby. Her eyes filled with tears as she thought of it, and her brother-in-law patted her hand.
“I think it could be that, but I think it might be something else. What do you think the chances are that you might be pregnant?”
“Oh, come on.” She laughed at him and sat up. “Don’t play that game with me, Jack. Bullshit. What did the doctor say? I had a one in ten thousand chance of getting pregnant, or was it one in ten million? I can’t remember.”
“I think it’s a possibility. And if you weren’t my sister-in-law, I’d do an exam. How about if I bring in one of my partners to check you, and we could do a quick urine test, and at least that would be ruled out. I don’t mean to upset you by suggesting it, but it could explain all your symptoms.”
“Yeah”—she glowered at him angrily—“so would cancer.”
“There’s a happy thought.” He patted her leg and left the room, while she fumed. She was furious with him for even raising that specter. She’d had enough of that torment in her life to want never to think about it again. Pregnant … bullshit! She raged to herself, and then Jack came back in the room with an attractive young woman. He introduced her to Diana, who barely managed to be civil.
“We just want to rule out pregnancy,” he explained. “She’s had some serious infertility issues that have been laid to rest, and allegedly pregnancy is not a possibility, or if it is, a very slight one. But I find some symptoms that I’m finding confusing.”
“Have you done a pregnancy test yet?” she asked him, and he shook his head, and asked Diana to lie down again. He showed her what he felt, and when he squeezed it, Diana felt an odd cramping sensation.
“Does that hurt?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said, staring at the wall. They had no right to do this to her. It was like raising the dead, and it wasn’t fair. She didn’t want to hear it.
“Check it out, will you, Louise?”
“Sure.” He thanked her and left the room, and Louise helped settle Diana into stirrups. Just being there made her start to shake, and Louise pretended not to notice as she put on gloves and began the examination.
“Who did you see about the infertility?” she inquired conversationally as she felt Diana’s insides, all the way to her tonsils.
“Alexander Johnston.”
“He’s the best. And what did he say?”
“Essentially, that I’m sterile.”
“Did he say why?”
“From an IUD I had when I was in college, or that was what he thought. I never had any symptoms, but my tubes are blocked, and both ovaries have severe adhesions.”
The examination continued and Diana wondered how long it would go on. “I guess that ruled out in vitro fertilization,” Louise said pleasantly, and Diana nodded. “Did he suggest a donor egg?” she asked, but Diana winced and shook her head, both from the question and what she was doing. None of it brought back happy memories for Diana.
“Yes, he did. And I wasn’t interested. We adopted a little girl in April.” And with that, Louise looked down at Hilary and smiled.
“So I see. She’s a real beauty.” And with that the examination ended. She smiled at Diana, and before she could say anything Jack was back in the room, his eyes full of questions.
“Well?”
Louise looked at her ruefully, and at her partner. “I don’t like contradicting my colleagues,” she said cautiously, while Diana waited for a verdict of cancer, “but I’d say Dr. Johnston was mistaken. That feels like a ten-week uterus to me. If you hadn’t told me there were problems here, I’d never have questioned it for a minute. Could even be more. When was her LMP?” Last menstrual period. Diana knew all the terms and hated hearing them again, as she closed her eyes, feeling dizzy.
“End of March, early April. She can’t remember.”
“That makes her roughly three months pregnant.”
“What?” Diana stared at them in amazement. “Are you kidding? Jack, don’t do this to me.”
“I’m not. Diana, I swear. I really mean it.” Louise excused herself and left them then, and Jack asked Diana to go to the bathroom and pee in a cup so he could do a pregnancy test, and when he did, it confirmed his diagnosis. Diana was definitely pregnant.
“I’m not … I can’t be …” she kept saying over and over again, but she was, and when she left his office, she looked dazed, and made him promise not to tell anyone until she did.
She drove straight to the network then to see her husband. He was in a conference, and she was in jeans, and she was carrying Hilary sound asleep in her car seat.
“I have to see him,” she explained to his secretary, “now!” And something in her face told the woman Diana meant it. She hurried in behind closed doors, and two minutes later Andy came out running.
“What’s wrong? Is the baby okay?” He looked frightened to see her, and she looked deathly pale and very sober.
“She’s fine. I need to talk to you. Alone.”
“Come into my office.” He took the baby from her, and she followed him to a glass-and-wood-panelled room with a dazzling view. And then he turned to look at her with worried eyes. “What’s wrong, Di?” Something terrible had obviously happened. He didn’t dare guess what.
But she didn’t mince words with him, she just looked at him in total confusion. “I’m pregnant.”
“Are you serious?” He stared at her and then he grinned. “Are you kidding me?” He couldn’t stop grinning, and she shook her head, still looking shell-shocked.
“Three months, do you believe that?”
“No, but baby, I’m so happy for you … and for me … and for Hillie … my God, three months, it must have happened right when we brought her home from San Francisco, How amazing.” But he had heard of that before, people who conceived instantly when they adopted, after years of unsuccessful trying.
Diana sat down, looking happy but sheepish. “I was so tired, I can’t even remember making love to you then.”
“Well, I hope it was me,” he teased. “Who knows? It could be an immaculate conception.”
“Not likely.”
“My God, I can’t believe it. When’s it due?”
“I don’t know. January something. I was too stunned to hear what Jack said. January tenth or something.”
“I can’t believe this. We ought to call Johnston and tell him.”
“To hell with Johnston,” she said grumpily, and stood up to kiss her husband. And then he swept her off her feet and whirled her around the room in his excitement.
“Hurray for us … hurray for you! We’re pregnant.” And then suddenly, he grew more serious. “How do you feel? Christ, no wonder you’ve been feeling so lousy.”
“Yeah, and the funny thing is, Jack says the worst is already over. He said I should be feeling better in the next week or two.”
“Good, let’s go out to dinner tonight to celebrate. L’Orangerie. We’ll put the baby in the cloakroom if we have to.” He kissed her again, and went back to his meeting, and Diana stood for a long time, looking at the view, and thinking of what had happened, with amazement.
Pilar was taking it easy that summer. She had her amniocentesis in June, and it had scared her to death, but it went smoothly. They’d had to take fluid out of both sacs, with two huge separate needles. But they already had their results, and now they knew that they were a girl and a boy, and both were healthy.
And once she had the results, Pilar knew she had to call her mother. She had called her on a Saturday afternoon, almost hoping that she was away for the weekend. But instead she was on call, and picked up the phone on the first ring. She was keeping an eye on two very sick children that weekend.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said, sounding surprised. “I thought it was the hospital. How are you?” Pilar suddenly remembered how she had felt as a child, always an intrusion among far more important matters in her mother’s life. But now she had something important to tell her, too, and she wondered how her mother would take it.
“I’m fine, Mother. And you?”
“Very well, keeping busy. And Brad?”
“He’s fine,” Pilar went on nervously. “Mother, I’ve got something to tell you.”
“Are you ill?” She sounded concerned, and Pilar was touched to hear it.
“No, I’m fine … I … Mother, I’m pregnant,” she said softly, with a happy smile, suddenly convinced that her mother would think it as wonderful as she did.
There was a long silence at the other end, and then Elizabeth Graham was at her coolest. “How foolish. I said as much to you when you married Brad. You’re both far too old to even think about having children.”
“That’s not what our doctors said. We discussed it with them before we got pregnant.”
“This was planned?” She sounded shocked.
“Yes, it was.”
“How incredibly stupid.” She was sixty-nine years old by then, and some of her ideas were not the most modern.
Pilar felt as though she had been slapped by her mother’s reaction, and yet talking to her was no different than it had ever been. But it was always the same old game, with Pilar ridiculously expecting her to be someone she wasn’t, never had been, and never would be.
“There’s more.” Shocking her mother was beginning to amuse her. “They’re twins.”
“Oh, my God. Did you take fertility drugs?”
“Yes, I did,” Pilar said with a wicked grin. Brad walked into the room, listened to the conversation for a moment, and wagged his finger. She was torturing her mother now and loving every minute of it, like a naughty child who is savoring its misdeeds to the fullest.
“For heaven’s sake, Pilar, who is the fool who advised you to do this?”
“Mother, this is what we wanted. But we went to a specialist in LA. She is supposed to be at the top of her field, and she came highly recommended.”
“What’s her name? Not that I’m familiar with that field, but I can ask around.”
“Helen Ward. But you don’t need to ask anyone. We did, and we heard nothing but good things about her.”
“She can’t be very bright if she’s encouraging forty-four-year-old women to get pregnant. I do everything I can to deter them. I see the results of those mistakes, and believe me, they’re disasters.”
“Not all your patients have mothers over forty, do they? Some of them must have had young mothers.”
“That’s true. But you can’t force nature’s hand, Pilar. You pay a terrible price when you do that.”
“Well, so far, everything’s fine. The amniocentesis came out normal, and both babies are fine, genetically anyway.”
“Did they warn you that there’s a risk of infection from the test, or you could simply lose them?” The voice of doom, all the way from New York. Not a single word of congratulations. But by now, Pilar expected nothing from her. She had given her mother the news. And how she dealt with it was up to her now.
“They warned us of all that, but the danger is past now. Everything went very smoothly.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” There was a long silence between them then, and Elizabeth Graham sighed and finally broke it. “I really don’t know what to say, Pilar. I wish you hadn’t done this. I suppose it’s too late now, but you were really ill-advised. What you’ve done is risky and unwise. Imagine how you’d feel if you lost those babies. Why put yourself through that?”
Pilar closed her eyes, still thinking about her miscarriage. Getting pregnant again had filled her heart, but there was also a place there that would never forget the loss, and she knew that.
“Please don’t say that,” Pilar said quietly. “We’re going to be fine.”
“I hope you’re right.” And then she added the coup de grace. “Brad must be getting senile.” But this time Pilar could only laugh, and after she hung up, she reported her mother’s diagnosis to her husband. And he was as amused as she was.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t notice.”
“Well, my mother’s onto you, sir! You can’t fool the Good Doctor Graham!”
“Listen, you gave her a pretty hard time. You must have shocked the hell out of her, and you were enjoying every minute of it. The poor woman thought she was free and clear, and suddenly you surprise her with not one grandchild, but two. That’s pretty heavy stuff for someone like her.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t make excuses for her. The woman is inhuman.”
“No, she’s not,” he defended her, “and I’m sure she’s a damn good doctor. She just isn’t your idea, or mine, of a great mother. It’s not her
thing. But there are other areas of her life that might even make her a worthwhile human being.”
“You sound like my shrink,” Pilar said in disgust, and then she kissed him. But at least she had told her mother the news. Now she could concentrate on Brad, and her babies.
They celebrated Adam’s first birthday in July. Pilar was five months pregnant and looked eight, but so far everything was fine. But most of the time she was condemned to bed rest. With twins they didn’t want to take any chances and have her deliver early.
“How do you feel?” Marina asked when she came to visit her one day, and Pilar laughed as she struggled to sit up in bed. It was like wrestling with a rhino.
“Like Yankee Stadium, and then some. Most of the time it feels like World War III in there. I’m not sure these guys are going to be such great buddies. They spend most of their time kicking each other in the shins, and knocking the wind out of me.” Even crossing the room was getting a little dicey. She felt so huge, and she was amazed by the enormity of her belly.
“You sure don’t go halfway when you do things,” Brad commented with a smile, watching her get into the tub one day. She really looked inhumanly enormous. And most of the time, just watching her, you could see knees and arms and elbows, and little feet just kicking and moving. Pilar thought it was wonderful for a while, but it was getting very uncomfortable by the middle of summer.
And by September, she was feeling absolutely miserable. She had heartburn all the time, and her belly felt as though it were about to explode, her skin was taut and cracking, her back was killing her, her ankles were twice their normal size, and if she did much more than walk out to her terrace, she got contractions. She couldn’t go anywhere, and she didn’t dare leave the house. She wasn’t even supposed to leave her bedroom for fear that her uterus would get “irritable” and she’d go into preterm labor. Her partners sent work home to her, but she didn’t feel very useful just lying there. And by the end of the month, she wondered how much longer she could stand it.
Her due date was still six weeks away, and it seemed like the longest six weeks of her life, but in every part of her, even when she complained, she knew it was worth it.
Mixed Blessings Page 29