Fertility: A Novel (26 page)

Over the years he’d handled too many babies to count, but he was tentative as he lifted this one from her open warmer. He swaddled her in a blanket and sat in the rocker Eva had used just hours before, rocking the baby much as she had done. He remembered what the OB had said about Sarah’s tubes and how she’d been shocked when she learned she was pregnant. As the baby grabbed onto his index finger, Rick wondered how in the world this child had been conceived.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

A few hours after leaving the NICU, Rick called in sick. He spent the day in the john or in bed.

When Jeff came home that night, he found Rick burrowed under his blankets, just as he’d been that morning. It was a first in their years of living together. Had Rick been laid low by a pathogen, he wouldn’t have worried. His body could beat back a pathogen. But Jeff guessed it was Sarah and the baby she’d delivered that had caused Rick to take to his bed. There was nothing his immune system could do about that.

Jeff was famished and decided to order a delivery. When he checked with Rick about getting something for dinner, he was met with an emphatic “no food” from beneath the covers. Jeff closed the door and let him be. He ordered a pizza, ate alone and then tackled some of the journals piled on the coffee table. Though he found one article particularly interesting — the one on pilon fractures — he could barely keep his eyes open. No doubt about it, he was in sleep deficit from yesterday’s late night. Probably the most productive thing would be to turn in early.

Around half past nine, Jeff started getting the coffee pot ready to brew automatically at 5:30 the next morning. He loved the idea of awakening to the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. To his way of thinking, it was the second best way to start the day. And since the first — making love to a beautiful woman — was not on the horizon, it was his absolute favorite. He usually ground enough beans for the two of them. From the looks of the coffee pot, though, Rick hadn’t touched this morning’s brew.

He knocked on Rick’s door.

“Go away.”

“I just have one question for you.”

“Go away.”

“It’s about coffee. Should I make some for you for tomorrow?”

“I said, ‘Go away.’”

Undeterred, Jeff opened the door and walked in. He was immediately hit by an overpowering smell of body odor.

“Do you understand English?” Rick asked

“Yes, I do, quite well as a matter of fact. As you know, I aced the verbal on my SATs and MCATs. And furthermore, I can’t go away because I live here. All I need to know is if you want coffee. And then, of course, there is the small issue of what’s up with you. As a physician, I need to satisfy my curiosity on that point,” Jeff said as he moved the clothes on Rick’s desk chair and sat down.

“Well, you don’t live in my room, so you can leave,” Rick said from under the covers.

“True, but if I left I would still be in the dark about the coffee and how you’re doing.”

“Enough with the fucking coffee. Yes. Make me coffee. I’m fine. Now you can go away,” Rick bellowed, turning to face the wall so that all Jeff could see was his dark, matted hair.

“Well, I feel better knowing that. By the way, I thought maybe you’d like an update on Sarah’s condition,” Jeff said, hoping that lure would do the trick.

Rick sat up in bed. “Tell me.”

“Well, much to my relief, it was a pretty good day. As you’d expect, she’s in a world of hurt, but on the whole, Alicia Lewis and I were happy with how the day went. Yesterday’s radical debridement and rigid fixation seem to have put us on the right track. We’re not out of the woods yet — not by a long shot — but a day without complications is my idea of a good day.”

“How bad is her pain? Are the narcotics covering?”

Jeff silently congratulated himself on getting Rick to talk. “Well, at first she didn’t want the narcotics. She said they would go into her milk and she didn’t want the baby to be exposed to them. Then we had to break it to her that her chances for a good recovery would be greatly diminished if she nursed the baby. You and I know that she’s going to need as much calcium hydroxyapatite as her body can make in order to mineralize and stiffen the collagen matrix. Without the mineralization she won’t form callus and lamellar bone. But Sarah was clueless about all of that.”

“What else?” Rick pressed.

Jeff hesitated, unsure if he should tell Rick about Sarah’s reaction.

“What else? Don’t hold out on me, Jeff.”

“Well, she got pretty upset when she realized she had to choose between healing herself and nursing her baby,”

Rather than demoralize Rick further, this news brought him to life. “Did you tell her she might lose her leg if the healing didn’t go well? That might persuade her to give up the idea of nursing. Sure, nursing is usually preferable, but in this case, the pluses are dwarfed by the minuses. They’ll get the baby on a good formula and she’ll do fine. Sarah’s body needs to be able to go full throttle into repair mode.”

“I explained that to her. I was glad her parents were there when I told her. They were gentle, but they made it clear that the healing of her leg was the most important thing she could do for the baby, you know, so she could care for her later on.”

“Did she buy it?”

“Yeah, she did, eventually. She’s a smart woman. She got it.” What Jeff omitted was the copious tears shed at the thought that she wouldn’t be able to nourish her baby from her breast; the self-recrimination at failing her baby yet another way, after not delivering her naturally, not being able to hold her right after she was born, not taking care of her on her first day of life.

Had Rick known any of that, he might not have been so relieved. “That’s good. So did she agree to the pain meds? God knows, she’s going to need them. I saw that leg last night.”

“Yeah, she’s on a self-administered morphine pump and the nurses tell me she’s using it — judiciously, but she’s using it.”

Rick stayed quiet for a minute and then he asked, “Has she seen the baby?”

“Yeah, the baby’s out of the NICU and they brought her to Sarah. They’ve also decided that as long as one of her parents stays with Sarah in her hospital room, she can keep the baby with her, provided she’s willing to pay extra for a private. Sarah and her parents agreed and they’ve already moved her to a private room. That lifted Sarah’s mood quite a bit.”

The news had a totally different effect on Rick. All he could think about was how one or the other of Sarah’s parents would always be there, making it impossible for him to see her alone.

“So her parents are with her now?” Rick asked.

“Yeah, that’s the deal I arranged with the neonatologist and the head nurse. The ortho nurses don’t want the responsibility of the baby’s care. The neonatologist said he’ll stop by twice a day for the next day or so. But after that, he feels she could be discharged to the grandparents’ care.”

“He’s probably right. Who is it, by the way?”

“Feinberg.”

“Oh, he’s a good guy. I trust his judgment. I saw the baby last night. I didn’t give her a complete exam, but she appears to be a healthy, full-term newborn.”

Jeff couldn’t believe how clinical Rick was in referring to his own child, but he figured this was not the time to call him on it. “Yeah, she looked good to me when I held her. She stared straight into my eyes, first thing. Maybe they all do that. I don’t have much experience with newborns. But she definitely looked like she was no worse for her traumatic entrance into the world.”

“Jeff?”

“Yeah?”

“You know, I met her OB last night — not Catherine Hanna. Her own OB.”

“You’re kidding. After midnight? That’s one dedicated OB.”

“He came to check on her on his way home after a delivery. He told me he’d diagnosed Sarah with primary infertility and said he had absolutely no idea how she had conceived.” Then he stopped and looked directly at his friend. “Her fallopian tubes are totally occluded, Jeff. Double hydrosalpinx. The fuckin’ tubes are completely closed. There’s no way they could allow conception to take place.”

“That’s insane. What are the chances someone like that could get pregnant without surgery or IVF?”

“The OB said that according to his tests there was no chance — same conclusion as the doc who made the original diagnosis, some guy up in Boston, where Sarah went to law school.”

“So it was a fluke?” Jeff asked.

“Yeah, a fluke that resulted in that baby girl you held. The OB said Sarah was shocked when she found out she was pregnant, but that she really wanted the baby.”

“The baby was all she talked to me about when I was trying to explain her injuries to her in the ER. She told me several times to take care of the baby first. It was like she didn’t care about her leg at all.”

“Jeff?” Rick asked, almost in a whisper.

“Yeah?”

“I’ve been trying to figure out what to do. I kept going in circles. But now I think there’s only one thing I can do, and that’s man up — you know — take responsibility for the baby. Even though she gave me a pass, seeing that baby made me realize that only a prick would leave Sarah holding the bag. There’s no way I’m gonna be a prick to Sarah. But how exactly I’m going to handle the whole thing, I haven’t worked out yet.”

“You should talk to her, you know, try to work things out.”

“I know. But now I’ll have to get past the parents.”

“Well, the parents will be there until the baby is discharged, maybe a day or two. Feinberg said as much today. I figure in the best-case scenario, Sarah will be an acute care inpatient for another week or so. Then I’ll move her to the rehab wing. That should give you plenty of time to talk to her alone.”

“Yeah, but you said it made Sarah happy to have the baby with her in the room,” Rick said. “I gotta tell you, separating a mother and a baby is fighting nature.”

“But a hospital is no place for a healthy baby. The baby can visit all day long before going back home with the grandparents. I’ll let you know when the coast is clear.” Jeff got up and moved Rick’s clothes back to the chair. “Okay. I’m beat. I’m going to get the coffee ready and head to bed. Yesterday was brutal.”

“I’ll second that,” Rick said. “Thanks, Jeff. You know, for the update on Sarah. I appreciate it.”

“No problem,” Jeff said as he headed for the kitchen to grind his coffee beans before falling into bed, dead to the world.

* * *

Rick had an eventful night, a night filled with dreams so intense they woke him from a deep sleep. He dreamed first that he was swimming in the pool up at Columbia. He was all alone. There was no other swimmer, no lifeguard. He looked at the clock above the pool. It was midnight. It was a beautiful swim, peaceful and relaxing. His pace was good, too, putting him on track for his personal best. Then, as he turned his face up for a breath, he saw someone come through the women’s dressing room door. In his next breath he saw it was a tall, slim woman on crutches. When he emerged from his flip turn at the end of the lane, he saw the woman was an amputee. She walked to the lane next to Rick’s and let one crutch fall. Then, using the other crutch, she gingerly lowered herself so her one good leg dangled in the water. Just as Rick reached the end of his lap, the woman slipped into the water. She and Rick pushed off from the wall at the same moment. Swimming side by side, they kept an identical pace, lap after lap. He was amazed she could do so well with a leg that ended below the knee. He looked up at the clock on the wall. It was five o’clock in the morning. Somehow five hours had passed and they had been swimming without a break. Rick thought he had better stop so he could get to morning rounds. As he started to climb out of the pool, he felt a hand on his arm. He turned around and saw it was Sarah. “Help me out?” she asked. Just seeing Sarah, feeling her touch on his arm, excited him. He woke up hard and came almost immediately.

After that Rick didn’t want to go back to sleep. He only wanted to remember the feeling he’d had when he realized it was Sarah who had matched him stroke for stroke, lap for lap; Sarah, beautiful and lithe still, asking him for help.

He got up and used the john. Then he went into the kitchen and did what his mother had often done when he awoke from a dream when he was little. He put some milk in a mug and warmed it in the microwave. Unlike those childhood nightmares, this was a dream he wanted to burn into his mind. He feared it would recede into the netherworld that swallowed most ordinary dreams. The feelings this dream evoked — peace, synchronicity with Sarah, sexual excitement — were feelings he didn’t want to lose.

The smell and taste of the warm milk evoked memories of their own. He remembered how protected he had felt after a terrifying dream, sitting on his mother’s lap, drinking his milk with their golden retriever next to them. He remembered how his mother had told him that nothing and no one was going to hurt him, that he was the safest little boy in the whole world. The thought of his old dog, Hercules, made him smile.

He looked at the clock on the microwave: 3:00. He could catch a few more hours of sleep if he was lucky. Even better would be to dream that dream again. He got into bed and soon was breathing slow, rhythmic breaths. The dream of swimming with Sarah came back to him just as he drifted off, but a full reprise was not to be. In its place was another dream, just as vivid as the first. In it, Rick was dressed in his white coat with a stethoscope hanging around his neck. He entered a patient’s room to find a little child dressed as a Buddhist monk. His sleeveless red-and-saffron robe covered his torso and legs, which were crossed as he sat on the hospital bed. Rick looked on the child’s chart and saw the name Gyatso, Tenzin. DOB: 07-06-35. Rick did a double take. That had to be a typo. This kid couldn’t have been more than nine years old.

”I’m Dr. Smith. I’m going to be your doctor.”

“Hello, Doctor. Very nice to meet you. I came to the hospital because I am suffering from a very bad pain in the stomach,” the little boy explained.

“When did you start to have pain?”

“Well, I was suffering and fretting for some days and then I thought to myself, ‘What exactly is the problem? What is the cause of my suffering?’ And then I realized it was coming from my stomach. So I knew I had to get help to end my suffering.”