Lightning (3 page)

They both expected it to be an enormous relief. The source of all their anguish was gone. But from the moment Alex woke up in a private room, crying miserably, they knew that it wasn't that easy. They were both consumed with guilt and grief, and everything she had never allowed herself to feel for their unborn child, she felt now, all the love and fear and shame and regret and longing she had never felt before. It was the worst experience of her life, and taught her something about herself she had never known or suspected. Maybe it had never even been there before, but it was there now. All she wanted, to fill the aching void the miscarriage had left, was to fill the void with another baby. And Sam felt it too. They both cried for their unborn child, and when Alex went back to work the following week, she was still feeling shaken.

They had gone away for a few days over a long weekend, and talked about it, and they both agreed. They weren't sure if it was a reaction, or real, but they knew that something major had changed. Suddenly, more than anything, they wanted a baby.

Sensibly, they decided to wait a few months, to see if the feelings stayed. But even that was impossible to do. Two months after the traumatic miscarriage, Alex sheepishly told Sam the news with barely concealed glee. She was pregnant.

And this time, unlike the first, it was a celebration. A cautious one, because there was always the possibility that she would lose this one too, or that she would never be able to carry a child to term. She was thirty-eight years old, after all, and she'd never had a baby. But her health was excellent, and her doctor assured them that there was no reason whatsoever to anticipate another problem.

“You know what? We're nuts,” she said, lying in bed one night, eating Oreo cookies, and getting crumbs all over their bed, but she claimed they were the only things that settled her stomach. “We are completely crazy. Four months ago, we were suicidal about having a kid, and now we lie here talking about names, and I keep reading articles in magazines in the doctor's office about what kind of mobiles to buy to put over the crib. Have I lost my marbles or what?”

“Maybe.” He smiled tenderly at her. “You're definitely harder to share a bed with. I had no idea that cookie crumbs would be part of the deal. Do you think you'll have this fixation for the whole time, or is this just a first trimester addiction?” She giggled at him, and they cuddled in bed. They made love more frequently than they had in years. They talked about the baby as though it were real, and already part of their lives. She had an amnio, and as soon as they knew it was a girl, they decided to call her Annabelle, after their favorite club in London, but it was a name that Alex had always loved, and it had good memories for them. This pregnancy was completely unlike the first one. It was as though they had learned an important lesson the first time, and felt as though they had been punished for their indifference and hostility to that baby. This time, there was no question of anything but unbridled excitement.

Alex's partners gave her a shower right after the New Year, and she left the office reluctantly that week, only two days before her due date. She had wanted to work right up until she went to the hospital, but it didn't make sense to continue working on cases she couldn't complete, so she left on schedule, and went home to wait for their little miracle, as they called her. Alex was afraid that she'd be bored, but found that she enjoyed setting up the nursery, and was surprised herself at how much time she spent folding little undershirts, and arranging diapers in neat stacks in the changing table. For a woman who struck fear into most lawyers' hearts when she entered a courtroom, she seemed to have changed in a single instant. She even worried sometimes that it might dull her skills when she went back, maybe she wouldn't be as tough, or as focused, but in spite of her concerns about that, all she could think of now was the baby. She could imagine holding it, feeding it, she wondered if she would have red hair like her own, or dark, dark hair like Sam's, blue eyes, or green. Like a long-awaited friend, she could hardly wait to see her.

They had arranged to have the baby in a birthing room at New York Hospital, Alex wanted everything to be natural. She was planning to savor every moment of the experience. At thirty-nine, she couldn't imagine doing this again, so she didn't want to take any of it for granted. Despite Sam's aversion to hospitals, he went to Lamaze classes with her, and was going to be at the delivery with her.

And she and Sam were having dinner at Elaine's three days after her due date, when her water broke, and they left quickly for the hospital, and were then sent home, until labor had started in earnest. They did everything their coaches had told them to do. She tried to sleep for a little while, then she walked, Sam rubbed her back, and it all seemed very pleasant and very easy. There was nothing difficult about this, nothing they couldn't handle, or she couldn't do. They lay in bed and talked, about how amazing it was that after thirteen years of marriage they had come to this, and Sam glanced at the clock, and tried to guess in how many hours they'd have their baby. They both fell asleep eventually, and when the contractions woke Alex again, she took a warm shower, as she'd been told to do, to see if labor would stop or get harder. She stood in the shower for half an hour, timing the pains, and then suddenly, with no warning, hard labor began for real. She could barely stand as she got out of the shower, and when she went to wake Sam, he was dead to the world, and she started to cry in panic as she shook him. He awoke finally, and gave a start when he saw the look on her face.

“Now?” he said, leaping out of bed, with his heart pounding, looking frantically for his trousers. He had left them on a chair, but suddenly in the dark, he couldn't find them, and Alex was doubled over in pain, gripping his arm, and crying.

“It's too late …I'm having it now …” she said, panicking, forgetting everything they'd told her. She was too old for this, it hurt too much, and she no longer wanted natural childbirth.

“Here? You're having it
here?
” He looked terrified as he stared at her, unable to believe it.

“I don't know … I … it … oh God, Sam …it's awful … I can't do this …”

“Yes, you can …we'll get you drugs at the hospital …don't worry about it … go put some clothes on.”

In the end, he'd had to help her dress and find her shoes, and he had never seen her as vulnerable, or in as much pain. The doorman had found them a cab instantly. It was four a.m., and she could hardly walk when they got her to the hospital. The doctor was already waiting for them there, and the labor nurses were well pleased with Alex's progress. She, on the other hand, was a lot less pleased with the process they referred to happily as “transition.” She sounded like someone Sam didn't even know as she shouted for drugs, and got hysterical with each contraction. But as labor progressed, she calmed down finally, and two hours after they'd gotten to the hospital, Alex was hard at work pushing out their baby. She'd had an epidural finally, and was calmer, as Sam held her shoulders and everyone in the room cheered her on. It seemed to take forever, but it was only half an hour before Annabelle's little face appeared. She had bright red hair, and she let out a huge yell, and then as though she'd surprised herself, she looked up at Sam, as tears coursed down her parents' cheeks. Annabelle just stared at Sam, as though she had been looking for him for a long time and had finally found him. She was introduced to her mother then, and Alex held her, overwhelmed by emotions she had never even dreamed of. She felt complete in a way she had heard people talk about, but never believed, and she couldn't even imagine what her life would have been like if she'd missed this experience. Within an hour, she was holding Annabelle as though she were an old hand at it, and happily nursing her baby. Sam took a thousand photographs of them, as he and Alex cried, unable to believe the blessing that had been bestowed on them, the miracle they had almost missed, and fortunately hadn't. They had been spared from their own stupidity, they felt, by a wiser Power who had showered them with good fortune.

Sam spent the first night in the hospital with them, and he and Alex spent most of it staring down at Annabelle, taking turns holding her, wrapping her and unwrapping her, changing her diapers and her nightgown, and Sam watched raptly as Alex nursed her. He thought it was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, and as they looked at her, they both agreed, what they wanted now was another baby. They couldn't believe that they had almost deprived themselves of this. And Sam could hardly believe that Alex was willing even to think about it so soon after the ordeal of labor, but she said it to him as they kissed over Annabelle sleeping soundly between them.

“I want to do this again.”

“You're not serious.” He looked stunned, but pleased. He had been thinking exactly the same thing. He would have loved a son, but another little girl would be fine too. Their little girl was so perfect and so beautiful. He kept touching her tiny toes, and Alex kept kissing her tiny fingers. They were completely enamored with their daughter.

It remained a passion with them once they got home, and Annabelle flourished in the unbridled adoration of her parents. Sam came home early as often as he could. And Alex went back to the office, with regret, when Annabelle was three months old. She tried to continue nursing her even after that, but it became impossible with the pressures of her schedule. What she did instead was come home for lunch as often as she could, and she made a promise to herself to leave promptly at five, whenever she wasn't in trial, and work at home at night after Annabelle went to bed. And on Fridays, she left at one o'clock, come hell or high water. It was a system that worked for them, and she was religious about coming home promptly whenever possible. And in exchange for their love and efforts, and their incessant appreciation of her, Annabelle adored her Mommy and Daddy. She was the light of their lives, and they were all that mattered to her. Carmen took care of her in the daytime, but Sam and Alex took care of her themselves the moment they got home from work, and Annabelle lived for that moment. She would squeal with excitement and delight whenever she saw them.

Carmen liked working for them. She was crazy about Annabelle, and they were nice people. She bragged a lot about Alex and Sam, about how important they were, and how hard they worked, and how successful. Sam was in the financial columns a lot. He had made a big splash early on, and had continued to make news frequently with record-making deals for important clients. And Alex had been on television more than once, with exceptionally newsworthy or landmark cases. Carmen loved that.

And there was no question in Alex's and Sam's minds that Annabelle was not only beautiful, but absolutely brilliant. She walked promptly at ten and a half months, spoke clearly shortly after that, and spoke in sentences long before it was expected.

“She's going to be a lawyer,” Alex always teased Sam, but neither of them could deny how incredibly she resembled her mother. She looked just like Alex, and even her mannerisms looked like a miniature version of her mother's.

In fact, the only disappointment to them was that their efforts to get pregnant again had been surprisingly unfruitful. They started when Annabelle was six months old, and had tried for a year after that. Alex was forty by then, and decided to go to a specialist to see if anything was wrong. But she and Sam had both checked out, and there was no problem with either of them. The doctor had just explained that, at her age, conception often took longer. At forty-one, they had put her on Serophene, a form of progesterone, to “improve” her ovulations, and for the past year and a half she had taken the drug that seemed to add more stress to her life than she already had. They were making love on schedule, using a kit to tell them exactly when her LH surge was, and when the optimum time was for conception. Alex had to add her urine to a series of chemicals, and when they turned blue, it was time for Sam to rush home from die office. They laughingly called it “blue day,” but there was no doubt that the pressure it put on them didn't make things any easier in lives that were already filled with stress and tension provided by their clients, and in Alex's case, her opponents.

It was not an easy time for them, but it was something they both agreed they wanted very badly. And it seemed funny to both of them that after so many years of emphatically not wanting children, they were now willing to go to any lengths to pursue having them. They had even talked about her taking Pergonal shots, which was a more extreme solution than the Serophene pills, with other side effects. And they also considered in vitro fertilization. They hadn't ruled out either of the more elaborate treatments. But at forty-two, she still felt she had a chance for conception without such heroic measures, particularly with the hormones she was currently taking. That in itself was already a big commitment, because taking them was anything but easy for her. She was one of those people who reacted severely to medication. But she felt it was worth it, because she and Sam both wanted another baby so badly. Annabelle had taught them many things, mainly how sweet life could be with the bond of a child between them, and how much they had missed in their years of childlessness. They both had impressive careers to show for it, but now she felt that they had missed something far more important.

Annabelle was three and a half years old by then, and Alex's and Sam's hearts melted every time they saw her. Her hair was a halo of coppery curls, her eyes were huge and green, just like her mother's, and her face was dusted with a thin veil of what Alex called “fairy dust,” which were her freckles.

There was a huge photograph of her, holding a shovel on the beach the summer before, in Quogue, as Alex sat at her desk and glanced up at it, with a quick grin. She glanced at her watch again. The deposition she'd sat in on had cost her the better part of her morning, and she had less than an hour now to go over some papers before she met with a new client.

She glanced up as Brock Stevens came in. He was one of the young associates in the firm, and he worked exclusively for her and one other attorney, doing research, and legwork, preparing cases for trial for her. He'd only been with Bartlett and Paskin for two years, but she was impressed with him, and his handling of her cases.