by Jodi Picoult
When you were born and had a Dexascan reading for bone density, your score was minus six. Ninety-eight percent of the population fell between plus and minus two. Bone constantly makes new bone and absorbs old bone; pamidronate slowed down the rate at which your body would absorb the bone; it allowed you to move enough to build up strength in your bones. Once, Dr Rosenblad had explained it to me by holding up a kitchen sponge: bone was porous, the pamidronate filled in the holes a little.
You'd had over fifty fractures in five years with the treatment; I couldn't imagine what life would have been like without it.
'I've got a good fact for you today, Willow,' Dr Rosenblad said. 'In a pinch, if you need a substitute for blood plasma, you can use the goop inside coconuts.'
Your eyes widened. 'Have you ever done that?'
'I was thinking of trying it today . . .' He grinned at you. 'Just joking. Got any questions for me before we get the show on the road?'
You slipped your hand into mine. 'Two sticks, right?'
'That's the rule,' I said. If a nurse couldn't get the IV inserted in your vein in two tries, I'd make her get someone else to do it.
It's funny - when I went out with Sean and another cop and his wife, I was the shy one. I was never the life of the party; I didn't strike up conversations with people standing in the grocery line behind me. But put me in a hospital setting, and I would fight to the death for you. I would be your voice, until you learned to speak up for yourself. I had not always been like this - who doesn't want to believe a doctor knows best? But there are practitioners who can go an entire career without ever running across a case of OI. The fact that people told me they knew what they were doing did not mean I would trust them.
Except Piper. I had believed her when she told me that there was no way we could have known any sooner that you would be born this way.
'I think we're good to go,' Dr Rosenblad said.
The treatments were four hours each, for three days in a row. After two hours of multiple nurses and residents coming in to get your vitals (honestly, did they think that your weight and height changed in the span of a half hour?), Dr Rosenblad would be called in, and then you'd give a urine sample. After that came the blood draw - six vials while you clutched my hand so hard you left tiny half-moons with your fingernails on the canvas of my skin. Finally, the nurse would administer the IV - the part you resisted the most. As soon as I heard her footsteps in the hall, I tried to distract you by pointing out facts in your book.
Flamingo tongues were eaten in ancient Rome as a delicacy.
In Kentucky, it's illegal to carry ice cream in your back pocket.
'Hey, sugar,' the nurse said. She had a cloud of unnaturally yellow hair and wore a stethoscope with a monkey clipped to the side of it. She was carrying a small plastic tray with an IV needle, alcohol wipes, and two strips of white tape.
'Needles suck,' you said.
'Willow! Watch your language!'
'But suck isn't a swear word. Vacuums suck.'
'Especially if you're the one doing the housecleaning,' the nurse murmured, swabbing your arm. 'Now, Willow, I'm going to count to three before I stick you. Ready? One . . . two!'
'Three,' you yelped. 'You lied!'
'Sometimes it's easier to not be expecting it,' the nurse said, but she was lifting the needle again. 'That wasn't a good one. Let's give it another try--'
'No,' I interrupted. 'Is there another nurse on the floor who can do this?'
'I've been putting in IVs for thirteen years--'
'But not in my daughter.'
Her face frosted over. 'I'll get my supervisor.'
She closed the door behind us. 'But that was only the first stick,' you said.
I sank down beside you on the bed. 'She was sneaky. I'm not taking any chances.'
Your fingers ruffled the pages of your book, as if you were reading Braille. One factoid jumped out at me: The safest year of life, statistically, is age ten.
You were halfway there.
The nice part about your being kept overnight in the hospital was that I didn't have to worry whether you'd wind up there, courtesy of a slip in the tub or an arm hooked on the sleeve of your jacket. As soon as they had finished the first infusion and flushed the IV and you were sleeping deeply, I crept out of the darkened room and went to the bank of pay phones near the elevators so that I could call home.
'How is she?' Sean asked as soon as he picked up the phone.
'Bored. Fidgety. The usual. How's Amelia?'
'She got an A on her math quiz and threw a fit when I told her she had to wash the dishes after dinner.'
I smiled. 'The usual,' I repeated.
'Guess what we had for dinner?' Sean said. 'Chicken cordon bleu, roasted potatoes, and stir-fried green beans.'
'Yeah, right,' I said. 'You can't even boil an egg.'
'I didn't say I cooked. The take-out counter at the grocery store was just particularly well stocked tonight.'
'Well, Willow and I had a culinary feast of tapioca pudding, chicken noodle soup, and red Jell-O.'
'I want to call her before I go to work tomorrow. What time will she get up?'
'Six, for the nurses' shift change,' I said.
'I'll set my alarm,' Sean answered.
'By the way, Dr Rosenblad asked me about doing the surgery again.'
This was - no pun intended - a bone of contention for Sean and me. Your orthopedic surgeon wanted to rod your femurs after you were out of your spica cast, so that, even if there were future breaks, they wouldn't displace. Rodding also prevented bowing, since OI bone grows spirally. As Dr Rosenblad said, it was the best way to manage OI, since you can't cure OI. But although I was gung ho about doing anything and everything that might save you some pain in the future, Sean looked at the here and now - and the fact that a surgery meant you'd be incapacitated once again. I could practically hear him digging in his heels. 'Didn't you print out some article about how rodding stunts growth in OI kids--'
'You're thinking of the spinal rods,' I said. 'Once they put them in to combat the scoliosis, Willow won't get any taller. This is different. Dr Rosenblad even said the rods have gotten so sophisticated, they'll grow with her - they telescope out.'
'What if she doesn't have any more femur breaks? Then she's having the surgery for nothing.'
The chances of you not having another leg break were about as good as those of the sun not rising tomorrow morning. That was the other difference between Sean and me - I was the resident pessimist. 'Do you really want to have to deal with another spica cast? If she winds up in one when she's seven or ten or twelve, who's going to be able to lift her then?'
Sean sighed. 'She's a kid, Charlotte. Shouldn't she be able to run around for a while before you take that away again?'
'I'm not taking anything away,' I said, stung. 'The fact is, she's going to fall. The fact is, she's going to break. Don't cast me as the villain, Sean, just because I'm trying to help her in the long run.'
There was a hesitation. 'I know how hard it is,' he said. 'I know how much you do for her.'
It was as close as he could come to alluding to the disastrous visit in the lawyer's office. 'I wasn't complaining--'
'I never said you were. I'm just saying . . . we knew it wouldn't be easy, right?'
Yes, we'd known that. But I guess I also hadn't realized it would ever be quite this hard. 'I have to go,' I said, and when Sean said he loved me, I pretended I had not heard.
I hung up and immediately dialed Piper. 'What's wrong with men?' I asked.
In the background, I could hear the water running, dishes clattering in the sink. 'Is that a rhetorical question?' she said.
'Sean doesn't want Willow to have rodding surgery.'
'Hang on. Aren't you in Boston for pamidronate?'
'Yes, and Rosenblad brought it up today when we saw him,' I said. 'He's been urging us to do it for a year now, and Sean keeps putting it off, and Willow keeps breaking.'
'Even though she'
ll be better off in the long run?'
'Even though.'
'Well,' Piper said, 'then I have one word for you: Lysistrata.'
I burst out laughing. 'I've been sleeping with Willow on the living room couch for the past month. If I told Sean I was going to stop having sex with him, it would be a pretty empty threat.'
'There's your answer, then,' Piper said. 'Bring on the candles, oysters, negligee, the whole nine yards . . . and when he's blissed out in a hedonistic coma, ask him again.' I heard a voice in the background. 'Rob says that'll work like a charm.'
'Thank him for the vote of confidence.'
'Hey, by the way, tell Willow that a person's thumb is as long as his nose.'
'Really?' I wedged my hand up to my face to check. 'She'll love that.'
'Oh, shoot, that's my call waiting. Why can't babies get born at nine in the morning?'
'Is that a rhetorical question?' I said.
'And we come full circle. Talk to you tomorrow, Char.'
After I hung up, I stared at the receiver for a long moment. She'll be better off in the long run, Piper had said.
Did she believe that, unconditionally? Not just about a rodding surgery but about any action that a good mother would undertake?
I didn't know if I could even muster the courage to sue for wrongful birth. Saying abstractly that there were some children who shouldn't be born was hard enough, but this went one step further. This meant saying one particular child - my child - shouldn't have been born. What kind of mother would face a judge and a jury, and announce that she wished her child had never existed?
Either the kind of mother who didn't love her daughter at all . . . or the kind of mother who loved her daughter too much. The kind of mother who would say anything and everything if it meant you'd have a better life.
But even if I came to terms with that moral conundrum, the additional wrinkle here was that the person on the other end of the lawsuit was not a stranger - she was my best friend.
I thought of the foam pad we had once used to line your car bed and your crib, how sometimes, when I lifted you out of it, I could still see the impression you'd made, like a memory, or a ghost. And then, like magic, it would disappear. The indelible mark I'd left on Piper, the indelible mark she'd left on me - well, maybe they weren't permanent. For years, I'd believed Piper when she said tests wouldn't have told us any earlier that you had OI, but she had been talking about blood tests. She'd never even alluded to the fact that other prenatal testing - like ultrasounds - might have picked up your OI. Had she been making excuses for me, or for herself?
It won't affect her, a voice in my head murmured. That's what malpractice insurance is for. But it would affect us. In order to make sure you could rely on me, I would lose the friend I'd relied on since before you were born.
Last year, when Emma and Amelia were in sixth grade, the gym teacher had come up behind Emma and squeezed her shoulders while she waited on the sidelines of a softball game. Innocuous, most likely, but Emma had come home saying that it creeped her out. What do I do? Piper had asked me. Give him the benefit of the doubt, or be a helicopter parent? Before I could even offer her my opinion, she'd made up her mind. It's my daughter, she said. If I don't go in and open up my mouth, I may live to regret it.
I loved Piper Reece. But I would always love you more.
With my heart pounding, I took a business card out of my back pocket and dialed the number before I could lose my nerve.
'Marin Gates,' said a voice on the other end.
'Oh,' I stumbled, surprised. I had been anticipating an answering machine this late at night. 'I wasn't expecting you to be there . . .'
'Who is this?'
'Charlotte O'Keefe. I was in your office a couple of weeks ago with my husband about--'
'Yes, I remember,' Marin said.
I twisted the metal snake of the phone cord around my arm, imagined the words I would funnel into it, send into the world, make real.
'Mrs O'Keefe?'
'I'm interested in . . . taking legal action.'
There was a brief silence. 'Why don't we schedule a time for you to come in and meet with me? I can have my secretary call you tomorrow.'
'No,' I said, and then shook my head. 'I mean, that's fine, but I won't be home tomorrow. I'm in the hospital with Willow.'
'I'm sorry to hear that.'
'No, she's fine. Well, she's not fine, but this is routine. We'll be home Thursday.'
'I'll make a note.'
'Good,' I said, my breath coming in a rush. 'Good.'
'Give my best to your family,' Marin replied.
'I've just got one question,' I said, but she had already hung up the phone. I pressed the mouthpiece against my lips, tasted the bitter metal. 'Would you do this?' I whispered out loud. 'Would you do this, if you were me?'
If you'd like to make a call, said the mechanical voice of an operator, please hang up and try again.
What would Sean say?
Nothing, I realized, because I wouldn't tell him what I'd done.
I walked back down the hall toward your room. On the bed, you were snoring softly. The video you'd been watching when you fell asleep cast a reflection over your bed in reds and greens and golds, an early rush of autumn. I lay down on the narrow cot that had been converted from one of the guest chairs by a helpful nurse; she'd left me a threadbare blanket and a pillow that crackled like polar ice.
The mural on the far wall was an ancient map, with a pirate ship sailing off its borders. Not long ago, sailors believed that the seas were precipitous, that compasses could point out the spots where, beyond, there'd be dragons. I wondered about the explorers who'd sailed their ships to the end of the world. How terrified they must have been when they risked falling over the edge; how amazed to discover, instead, places they had seen only in their dreams.
Piper
I
met Charlotte eight years ago, in one of the coldest rinks in New Hampshire, when we were dressing our four-year-old daughters as shooting stars for a forty-five-second performance in the club's winter skating show. I was waiting for Emma to finish lacing up her skates while other mothers effortlessly yanked their daughters' hair into buns and tied the ribbons of the shimmering costumes around their wrists and ankles. They chatted about the Christmas wrapping paper sale the skating club was doing for fund-raising and complained about their husbands, who hadn't charged the video camera batteries long enough. In contrast to this offhanded competence, Charlotte sat alone, off to one side, trying to coax a very stubborn Amelia into tying back her long hair. 'Amelia,' she said, 'your teacher won't let you onto the ice like that. Everyone has to match.'
She looked familiar, although I didn't remember meeting her. I thrust a few bobby pins at Charlotte and smiled. 'If you need them,' I said, 'I also have superglue and marine varnish. This isn't our first year with the Nazi Skating Club.'
Charlotte burst out laughing and took the pins. 'They're four years old!'
'Apparently, if you don't start young, they'll have nothing to talk about in therapy,' I joked. 'I'm Piper, by the way. Proudly defiant skating parent.'
She held out a hand. 'Charlotte.'
'Mom,' Emma said, 'that's Amelia. I told you about her last week. She just moved here.'
'We came because of work,' Charlotte said.
'For you or your husband?'
'I'm not married,' she said. 'I'm the new pastry chef over at Capers.'
'That's where I know you from. I read about you in that magazine article.'
Charlotte blushed. 'Don't believe everything in print . . .'
'You ought to be proud! Me, I can't even bake a Betty Crocker mix without screwing it up. Luckily, that's not part of my job description.'
'What do you do?'
'I'm an obstetrician.'
'Well, that beats what I do, hands down,' Charlotte said. 'When I deliver, people gain weight. When you deliver, they lose it.'
Emma poked a finger into a hole in her costum
e. 'Mine's going to fall off because you don't know how to sew,' she accused.
'It won't fall off,' I sighed, then turned to Charlotte. 'I was too busy suturing to sew a costume, so I hot-glued the seams.'
'Next time,' Charlotte told Emma, 'I'll sew yours when I do Amelia's.'
I liked that - the idea that she was already counting on us being friends. We were destined to be partners in crime, subversive parents who didn't care what the establishment thought. Just then, the teacher stuck her head inside the locker room door. 'Amelia? Emma?' she snapped. 'We're all waiting for you out here!'
'Girls, you'd better hurry. You heard what Eva Braun said.'
Emma scowled. 'Mommy, her name's Miss Helen.'
Charlotte laughed. 'Break a leg!' she said as they hurried into the rink. 'Or does that only work if the stage isn't made of ice?'
I don't know whether you can look at your past and find, woven like the hidden symbols on a treasure map, the path that will point to your final destination, but I have thought back to that moment, to Charlotte's good-luck phrase, many times. Do I remember it because of the way you were born? Or were you born because of the way I remember it?
Rob was braced over me, his leg moving between mine as he kissed me. 'We can't,' I whispered. 'Emma's still awake.'
'She won't come in here . . .'
'You don't know that--'
Rob buried his face in my neck. 'She knows we have sex. If we didn't, she wouldn't be here.'
'Do you like to imagine your parents having sex?'
Grimacing, Rob rolled away from me. 'Okay, that effectively killed the mood.'
I laughed. 'Give her ten minutes to fall asleep and I'll get the fire going again.'
He pillowed his head on his arms, staring up at the ceiling. 'How many times a week do you think Charlotte and Sean do it?'
'I don't know!'
Rob glanced at me. 'Sure you do. Girls talk about that kind of thing.'
'Okay, first of all, no we don't. And second of all, even if we did, I don't sit around wondering how often my best friend has sex with her husband.'
'Yeah, right,' Rob said. 'So you've never looked at Sean and wondered what it would be like to sleep with him?'
I came up on an elbow. 'Have you?'
He grinned. 'Sean's not my type . . .'
'Very funny.' My gaze slid toward him. 'Charlotte? Really?'