The Disappeared Girl

by Martin J. Smith

  “All day.”

  “Thanks.”

  When she was gone, Christensen returned to his computer. He returned to the website’s home page and clicked on “Contact Ray Krug.” In the subject line of the e-mail form, he typed: “Questions about the crash.” He tabbed down to the message area. “Dear Mr. Krug,” he began. “My name is Jim Christensen.”

  Chapter 9

  Melissa decided to go to Planned Parenthood alone. Her dad accepted the decision without argument, didn’t even ask why. “I’m five minutes away if you need me,” he’d said as she left for the clinic appointment she’d postponed earlier in the week. “I’ll be here.”

  That she never doubted.

  Now, surrounded by unfamiliar medical equipment, she wished he were closer. She needed his hand to hold, but instead had clamped an iron grip on the padded edge of the ob-gyn examining table. This was so—what? Real? Scary? Forever? Eleven weeks into this, and she’d weighed the potential consequences of her choices again and again, let the future unspool in her mind three very different ways—a lifelong struggle to raise an unintended child; a lifetime of questions, both hers and the child’s, that would follow an adoption; or termination of the pregnancy. She had to decide. She needed more time, but she knew time was nearly up.

  She flinched at the doctor’s buoyant knock.

  “It’s OK,” she said.

  The woman who stepped through the door was short and sturdy, maybe forty, but it was hard to tell. Her skin was the color of charcoal, and her black hair hung in a hundred tiny braids to her shoulders. Gold wire-rimmed granny glasses clung to the tip of her rounded nose, and Melissa could see, under her white smock, the collar and cuffs of a riotous batik print blouse accented by a necklace of hand-carved ebony animals. She liked this woman immensely even before the doctor said, “I’m guessing, hon, you’d rather be somewhere else?”

  Melissa nodded.

  The doctor turned to the washbasin and pumped antiseptic soap into her palm. She scrubbed her hands and dried them on a paper towel. She tugged two latex gloves from a wall dispenser, but before she put them on she stepped over to the table and brushed Melissa’s dark hair back off her damp forehead. Her hands were smooth and gentle.

  “Honey, this table ain’t going anywhere,” she said. “No need to hold on quite so tight.”

  Melissa managed a smile and eased her grip, felt the stitches in her wrist stop pulling as she did. “Nervous.”

  “’Course you are. I’m Dr. O’Shaughnessy. Call me Dr. Jeri.”

  Melissa actually laughed. “Irish?”

  “As the day is long.” Dr. Jeri O’Shaughnessy waited for another reaction, then grinned at Melissa’s openmouthed silence. “My ex, actually. Kept his name, though. Nice conversation starter. Got few enough giggles out of the marriage.” The doctor opened the file folder in her hands. “You Melissa Christensen?”

  “Afraid so.”

  “The picketers bother you?”

  Melissa nodded. “Wish you had a back entrance “

  “They’d just picket that, too.”

  The doctor snapped on one glove, then the other. Melissa lifted her feet into the stirrups beneath the tiny room’s harsh light.

  “When was your last period, hon?”

  During the exam, Melissa told Dr. Jeri O’Shaugnessy more than the good doctor really wanted or needed to know. How she’d met the baby’s father the previous spring. How he’d lied that his marriage was all but dead, and let her believe he was falling in love with her. How, after she told him she was pregnant, he asked who else she’d slept with—the precise moment she decided to move forward without him.

  “Well that’s a new one,” the doctor said as she dropped both gloves in the trash. “Really, I’m shocked.”

  Melissa was feeling quite sorry for herself, but laughed even as a tear rolled down her cheek. “They’re such assholes,” she said.

  “And we keep buying their rap. Why you suppose that is?”

  Melissa felt warm blood surge into her cold feet as the doctor unlocked the stirrups and eased her legs down onto the table. She smoothed her examination smock and sat up as the doctor jotted a few notes in the file folder, then rolled a stool across the room and sat beside her.

  “OK, here’s the deal,” the doctor said. “You’re eleven weeks, give or take a week. Everything seems fine in there for now, but I can tell you’re stressed. That means the fetus is stressed. The heartbeat’s irregular. Probably nothing to worry about.”

  Melissa sat up, propping herself on her elbows. “Probably?”

  “And I see something on your gene test I want to follow up on,” the doctor said. “Any unusual medical history in your parents’ families?”

  She’d known this day might come. There were questions Melissa couldn’t answer, because she simply didn’t know. “I’m adopted,” she said. “I—I’m not sure.”

  “The agency’s got records, hon. What you need to do is write them a letter—”

  “No, no, it’s …” Melissa cleared her throat again. “I was abandoned when I was a few hours old. Brought here from Argentina when I was five, but I’ve never known, mother or father. Never did, never will.”

  The doctor studied her for a long time through the spectacles at the end of her nose, then glanced at Melissa’s case file. From it, she tugged a stapled sheaf of papers with a single, bright red Post-it on one of its pages. Dr. Jeri O’Shaughnessy spent a few minutes reading whatever was written on that page, her face betraying nothing.

  “So you’re not aware of any family health history?”

  Melissa’s face must have telegraphed her concern.

  “I ask because they flagged some gene markers, high-risk ones, on those tests you ordered,” the doctor said. “Doesn’t mean there’s a problem, just that it’d be better to know more, especially about your biological parents.”

  “Like?”

  “I don’t want to worry you, honey. You’re stressed enough. But I do want to be straight with you. Based on what I’m seeing here”—she held up the sheaf of stapled papers—“this baby has a higher-than-normal risk.”

  “Of? You mean, like, a birth defect?”

  The doctor nodded. “How risky depends on a lot of different things, hon, so mostly it’s a question, not an answer. But it might be something you want to consider before you make a decision about this pregnancy. Know what I’m saying?”

  “Sort of.”

  The doctor put a hand on Melissa’s knee. “Our genes tell us a lot about what might happen to us. Doesn’t mean anything will happen, but when some of those genes get tweaked a little—”

  “You mean, like, mutated?”

  The doctor smiled. “Somebody’s been reading ahead. So, yeah, mutated. And in people like that—like you—the risk of certain things go up.”

  Melissa swallowed hard. “A lot?”

  O’Shaughnessy nodded. “There’s one recessive gene they flagged in you. That’s all. But it’s a gene that indicates a higher chance of a genetic lung problem, something called cystic fibrosis. Know anything about it?”

  Melissa thought of her classmate Jeremy Crouch, who she’d watched struggle with the disease every day during her seventh-grade civics class. He’d died at twenty-three never knowing the pleasure of an easy breath. She gestured to the file folder in the doctor’s hands.

  “And they can tell that from the tests?” she said.

  “I wanna be clear, hon: It does not mean your baby has it. But knowing your family history might—knowing it would just help, is all. So there’s no way to find out?”

  “I don’t know anything,” Melissa said.

  The doctor jotted another note in Melissa’s case file. “Well then, how about you? Got any health problems I should know about? Cysts, tumors, lumps?”

  “I had a cyst, ovarian, benign, maybe six years ago. No biggie.”

  The doctor made a note. “How about alcohol or drugs? What’s your party life like?”

  Melissa
shrugged. “Nothing heavy. Maybe a glass of wine now and then. I smoke a little pot, not much.”

  “Got a regular doctor now? A pediatrician growing up?”

  Melissa gave her the names and watched the doctor write them down on the folder. She also gave her the name of the surgeon who removed her cyst. It occurred to her that the sum total of her medical background, as far as this obstetrician was concerned, was now just a few lines long.

  “I can get my doctor’s records, if you want,” she said. “If my dad doesn’t have them, I can call them. They’re right here in Oakland.”

  “That’ll help. Just bring that stuff next time. No other allergies or conditions you know about?”

  Melissa shook her head. “Sorry I can’t be more help.”

  The stool slid out from under the doctor as she stood. It rolled backwards but stopped before hitting the wall. “We’ll just keep a little close eye on you. Meantime, hon, relax. Stress causes more problems during a pregnancy than just about anything else. Now, you’ve still got options, OK? But you don’t have lots of time left to think about ’em. You probably been over your choices a few times, right?”

  Melissa nodded. “Already talked to the counselor.”

  “That’s a decision I can’t help you with. But if you got any medical questions, I’m the one to ask.”

  Melissa knew she alone would have to answer the one question that mattered. But she was curious. “Is there a way—” She heard her voice waver, so she stopped and cleared her throat. “Is there a way to know at this point if it’s a boy or a girl?”

  Dr. O’Shaughnessy stood beside the exam table, staring down, studying Melissa’s face for clues. After a long moment, she gestured to a boxy machine near the washbasin. Melissa read the words on the front panel: ACUSON 128 Color Doppler/Abdominal-Ob Transducer. “I think we should try an ultrasound anyway, see what we see,” the doctor said. “Just takes a few minutes.”

  “You could tell the sex that way?”

  “Sometimes. Depends on which way things are sitting in there. Wanna try?”

  Melissa nodded. “I’m curious, is all.”

  She felt the doctor’s warm hand settle on hers. “Think about this a minute, hon. I’m happy to take a look, but once you see—it can make it hard to be clearheaded about things, know what I’m saying? So let’s do this: I’m gonna go check on some paperwork out at reception. Take me a couple minutes. You think it over while I’m gone, OK?”

  “Deal.”

  Melissa leaned back and stared at the exam room’s false ceiling, then at the “Stages of Fetal Development” chart on the wall to her left. At eleven weeks, the lima bean, as she’d been calling it, had arms and legs and black eyes set into a bulbous alien head. She felt no particular bond with it, no emotion. Should she?

  Ten minutes later, after Melissa reaffirmed her interest in having an ultrasound, Dr. Jeri O’Shaughnessy wheeled the ACUSON over to the exam table. “This might be cold at first, hon,” she said, smearing a dollop of clear gel across Melissa’s lower abdomen. She flipped a switch on the machine, and the video monitor blinked on.

  “I can record this if you want.”

  Melissa shrugged. “Why not?”

  The screen came alive with electronic swirls as the doctor slid the mouse thingie through the gel on her belly. From time to time, a defining line appeared.

  “Found your uterus,” the doctor reported, moving the mouse in ever-tightening circles. “Baby’s in there somewhere.”

  Both women stared in silence as the swirls took form. They could see both walls of Melissa’s uterus now, like the banks of a river channel. The doctor explored its length until a curving line appeared. Melissa recognized the black dot below it as an alien eye.

  “There we go,” O’Shaughnessy said. “That’s the forehead.”

  She moved the mouse ever so slightly, and the view shifted to a whirlpool of blue pixels. It pulsed in a hypnotic rhythm.

  “What’s that?”

  The doctor smiled, but never took her eyes off the screen. “That,” she said, “is the heartbeat.”

  Melissa swallowed hard, watching the blood—her blood—course through a heart not much bigger than a pencil point. The doctor leaned in close to the screen and studied the image a long time. Then she jotted some notes in the case file.

  “What?” Melissa said.

  O’Shaughnessy said nothing for an uncomfortably long time. When she finally spoke, she was noncommittal. “These machines, they’re OK for some things, but not much good for things like this.”

  “Things like what?”

  Melissa felt the doctor’s hand shift again, a fraction of an inch this time. The view shifted south, but all they found was a side view of tiny legs drawn up tight. “Lemme get underneath,” O’Shaughnessy said, gently steering Melissa to a more workable position. The doctor smeared a fresh glob of gel on the left side of her belly and started her search again. She eventually found what looked like a small “V,” and Melissa recognized it as a view from below, looking up through the fetus’s legs with the head just beyond.

  “Not much there to see, is there, hon?”

  Melissa squinted at the screen. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  O’Shaughnessy laughed. “Honey, I know you know what a penis looks like. You see one here?”

  Melissa looked again at the smooth wishbone of tiny legs on screen. “So it’s a girl?”

  “Looks that way “

  With her free hand, O’Shaughnessy jabbed a button on the ACUSON. The on-screen view shifted to a wider angle. They were back to indecipherable blue swirls. The walls of Melissa’s uterus appeared again, smaller and narrower this time. Curled into the middle of the channel was a form much like that of the eleven-week fetus on the development chart. The only differences were a tiny arm crooked at the elbow and a five-fingered fist set hard to where the mouth would be.

  “Oh!” Melissa heard herself gasp. “Is she—she’s sucking her thumb?”

  Chapter 10

  Christensen entered Point State Park through the graceful arch of the overpass tunnel, hurrying because he was already late. Only a few summer joggers were here this time of midmorning, huffing along the concrete rim of the urban oasis at the confluence of Pittsburgh’s Allegheny and Monongahela rivers. The city’s burnished skyline was at his back. A quarter mile straight ahead, the mighty Point fountain roared straight into the sky like a liquid flare. That’s where Ray Krug said he’d be.

  Krug had been skeptical, initially refusing to meet. “I get a lot of calls,” he’d replied to Christensen’s e-mail, which Christensen interpreted to mean, “Every crackpot with a theory about the plane crash eventually finds me.” Then, after two more e-mails and an extended phone conversation, Krug had suddenly changed his mind. During their last conversation, he’d actually seemed anxious to get together.

  Christensen picked up his pace, not a run exactly, but a determined trot. Melissa had called an hour earlier, a little freaked by what the doctor had told her about the worrisome markers on her gene test, and now he felt an urgency. He’d learned to live with uncertainty about his daughter’s biological history, but those persistent questions were no longer abstractions. Melissa needed to know everything she possibly could about her life before adoption. Soon.

  Squinting into the near distance, he surveyed the few figures around the fountain’s low lip. A pair of young lovers sat hunched in private conversation, their legs dangling together a foot off the ground. A rumpled man slept just to their left, one foot resting protectively on a shopping cart filled with filthy clothes, blankets, and aluminum cans. That was it? Could Krug have left already? Christensen checked his runner’s watch—10:06. He was late—he’d waited until he was sure Melissa wasn’t going to call him from the clinic—but only by a few minutes. His trot became a three-quarter-speed run.

  He stopped at the near rim—the six o’clock position if the fountain were a clock face—and again surveyed the people he’d seen as he ente
red the park. The lovers, it turned out, were both male. The homeless guy was snoring even though he was wet from the breeze-borne mist that occasionally drifted from the 100-foot jet of water nearby. The fountain’s wind sensor apparently wasn’t working. No one there fit Krug’s self-description. Not a pair of aviator sunglasses or a Steelers ball cap in sight.

  Christensen turned toward the North Side, where Three Rivers Stadium used to be, and jogged along the fountain’s perimeter. When he reached the three o’clock position, he spotted a solitary figure standing about thirty yards away, at the very tip of the Point. His back to Christensen, the man seemed to be studying the river—the Ohio from that point forward—as it moved downstream past the elegant span of the West End Bridge. He was wearing a black baseball cap. One arm rested on the retractable grip of a black rolling suitcase.

  Christensen stopped a nonthreatening distance away. “Mr. Krug?”

  The man turned and stared through dark aviator glasses.

  “I’m Jim Christensen,” he said with more confidence. “Sorry I’m a little late.”

  Krug nodded, but then turned away again. He clasped his hands behind his back and rocked from his heels to his toes. Christensen joined Krug on the Point’s concrete lip, facing downstream. He remained a respectful distance away, but clasped his own hands behind his back, a signal he hoped would reassure Krug that he was an OK guy.

  “There’s four rivers, you know,” Krug said, skipping the introduction. “Not three.”

  Christensen knew the story, but pretended he didn’t. “Four?”

  Krug nodded. “The underground river. It’s an aquifer, really, but that’s what feeds the fountain. So the whole three rivers thing is misleading. Some things exist even if you can’t see them.”

  The man turned again, and this time Christensen could see his eyes behind the tinted lenses. They were looking for a reaction. Christensen cleared his throat.

  “That’s called faith, right?”

  Krug shook his head. “Faith is for people who don’t have anything better.” He nudged the rolling suitcase with his toe. “Like evidence. If you’re real careful how you gather it, and real logical about how you analyze it, sometimes you can draw reasonable conclusions. Just like the fourth river.”