Shock (9 page)

"I feel a little like a thief taking this kind of money out of here," Deborah said sotto voce as they wended through the crowded room. Like Joanna she was clutching her envelope in her hand. She avoided eye contact with anyone, fearing she might be forced to face someone who'd had to mortgage her home to pay for infertility treatment.

"With this many patients here I think the Wingate can afford it," Joanna responded. "I'm getting the distinct feeling this business is a virtual money machine. Besides, it's the prospective clients who are actually paying us, not the clinic."

"That's just the point," Deborah said. "Although I suppose those people choosey enough to demand a Harvard coed's egg can't be hurting for cash."

"Exactly," Joanna said. "Concentrate on the idea that we are helping people, and they, in their gratitude, are helping us."

"It's hard to feel altruistic getting a check for forty-five thousand dollars," Deborah said. "Maybe I feel more like a prostitute of sorts than a thief, but don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining."

"When the couples get their children, they'll be thinking they got the better deal by a long shot."

"You know, I think you are right," Deborah said. "I'm going to stop feeling guilty."

They emerged into the crisp New England morning. Deborah was about to descend the stairs when she became aware that Joanna was hesitating. Glancing at her friend's face she noticed that Joanna was grimacing.

"What's the matter?" Deborah asked with concern.

"I just had a pang down here in my lower abdomen," Joanna said. She gestured with her left hand over the area. "I even felt a twinge in my shoulder, of all places."

"Do you still feel it?"

"Yes, but it's better."

"Do you want to go back and see Dr. Donaldson?"

Joanna tentatively pushed against her lower belly just in from the crest of her left hip. There was a mild degree of discomfort until she let go. Then she got another stab of pain. A whimper escaped from her lips.

"Are you all right, Joanna?"

Joanna nodded. Like the first spasm, the pain had been fleeting except for a remaining mild ache.

"Let's go page Dr. Donaldson,' Deborah said. She grasped Joanna's arm with the intention of leading her back into the Wingate Clinic, but Joanna resisted.

"It doesn't feel that bad," Joanna said. "Let's go to the car."

"Are you sure?"

Joanna nodded again, gently extracted her arm from Deborah's grip, and started down the steps. At first it felt decidedly better to walk slightly bent over, but after a half dozen steps she was able to straighten up and walk relatively normally.

"How does it feel now?" Deborah questioned.

"Pretty good," Joanna asserted.

"Don't you think it would be a better idea to go back in and see Dr. Donaldson, just to be on the safe side?"

"I want to get home," Joanna said. "Besides, Dr. Smith specifically warned me about having the kind of pain I'm experiencing, so it's not as if it's unexpected."

"He warned you about pain?" Deborah asked with surprise.

Joanna nodded. "He wasn't sure which side I would feel it on, but he said I'd have a deep ache with some stabs of sharp pain which is right on the money. The surprise for me is that I didn't feel it until now."

"Did he have any suggestions for what to do for it?"

"He thought ibuprofen would suffice, but he said that if it didn't, I could have a pharmacist call him through the clinic's telephone number. He said he's available twenty-four hours a day."

"That's strange they gave you a warning about pain," Deborah said. "Nobody warned me, and I haven't had any. I think maybe you should have insisted on local anesthesia like I did."

"Very funny," Joanna said. "I liked being asleep through the ordeal. It was worth a bit of pain and the mild inconvenience of having to get three stitches removed."

"Where did you have stitches?"

"At the peephole sites."

"Are you going to have to come back here to get them removed?" Deborah asked.

"They told me any medical person could do it," Joanna said. "If Carlton and I are talking by then, he can do it for me. Otherwise I'll just stop in the health service."

They reached the car and Deborah went around to the passenger side to open the door for her roommate. She even supported Joanna's arm as Joanna climbed in. "I still think you should have had local anesthesia," she said.

"You're never going to convince me," Joanna said with conviction. Of that, she felt sure.

FIVE

MAY 7, 2OO1 1:5O P.M.

A SHUDDER RIPPLED THROUGH the plane signaling the start of a period of mild, clear air turbulence. Joanna lifted her eyes from the paperback book she was reading to glance around the cabin to make sure no one else was concerned. She didn't like turbulence. It reminded her that she was suspended far above the earth, and not being of a scientific mind, she didn't mink it was reasonable that an object as heavy as a plane could actually fly.

No one had paid the few bumps and thuds any notice, least of all Deborah sitting next to her, who was enviably asleep. Her roommate hardly looked her best. Her now shoulder-length mane of almost-black hair was tousled and her mouth was slightly agape. Knowing Deborah as well as she did, Joanna knew she'd be mortified if she could see herself. Although the thought of awakening her passed through Joanna's mind, she didn't. Instead she found herself marveling at the transposition of their respective hairstyles. Deborah's was now long while Joanna had spent the last six months with her hair short, even shorter than Deborah's had been back when they had lived in Cambridge.

Switching her attention to the window, Joanna pressed her nose up against the glass. By doing so, she could see the ground thousands upon thousands of feet below, and just as it had been fifteen or twenty minutes ago, it was featureless tundra interspersed with lakes. Having consulted the map in the airline magazine, Joanna knew they were flying over Labrador en route to Boston's Logan Airport. The trip had seemed interminable, and Joanna was antsy and looking forward to their arrival. It had been almost a year and a half since they'd left, and Joanna was eager to set foot in the good old USA. She had resisted coming back to the States for the duration, despite her mother's recurrent pleading, which was particularly insistent during the Christmas holiday seasons. The holidays were a big deal in the Meissner household, and Joanna missed them, especially when Deborah had gone back to New York to be with her mother and stepfather. But Joanna had been unwilling to face her mother's constant harping about the unmitigated social disaster caused by her breaking off the engagement with Carlton Williams.

As they'd originally planned, she and Deborah had gone to Venice, Italy, to escape the humdrum aspect of their graduate student lives and to make sure Joanna didn't have a relapse into believing that marriage was a necessary goal. At first they lived for almost a week in the San Polo district near the Rialto Bridge in the bed-and-breakfast that Deborah had found on the Internet. After that they'd moved to the Dorsoduro Sestiere on the recommendation of a couple of male university students they'd met on their second day while having coffee in Piazza San Marco. With a bit of luck and a lot of walking, they had managed to locate a small, affordable two-bedroom apartment on the top floor of a modest, fourteenth-century house on a square called Campo Santa Margherita.

As serious students, the women had quickly adapted to a strict schedule to facilitate their work. Every morning they made themselves get out of bed by seven regardless of the previous evening's festivities. After a shower they'd descend to the campo and take a short walk to a traditional Italian bar for fresh cappuccinos, which was particularly pleasant in the summer months when they'd sit in the shade of the square's plane trees. Then it was on to the Rio di San Barnaba to complete their colazione with fresh fruit purchased from the waterborne greengrocers, or verduriere. A half hour later they were back in the apartment at their respective workstations to write.

Without fail they wrote until one o'clock in the afternoon. Only then did they turn off their laptops. After washing up and changing clothes, they headed to the restaurant they'd picked out for that day's lunch, which often included a glass or two of white wine from Friuli. Then it was time to switch hats from committed doctoral students to tourists. Armed with a virtual library of guidebooks, they'd set out to visit the sites. Three afternoons a week they went to the university itself where they'd arranged to have Italian lessons as well as lectures on Venetian art.

The women's Italian sojourn wasn't all work and serious touring. Socially they had a blast dating almost exclusively Italian men who were associated in some way with the university. Deborah's first beau was a graduate student in art history who was also a gondolier in season. Joanna began seeing an instructor in the same department. But neither woman allowed herself to become terribly involved, maintaining, as Deborah described it, a decidedly male attitude toward dating: namely, treat it like a sport.

Joanna sighed when she thought of all the wonderful sights they had seen and experiences they'd had. It had been an extraordinary year and a half in every way including professionally. Tucked in their carry-ons stored above in the overhead compartment were two completed Ph.D. theses. Thanks to E-mail, which had facilitated sending chapters and their revisions back and forth, the theses had already been accepted. All that was left were their defenses, which both women were confident would not be a problem. A week after they got back, both had interviews scheduled: Joanna at the Harvard Business School and Deborah at Genzyme.

Even Carlton had come for several visits. The first time it had been totally out of the blue, and it had made Joanna furious. Before leaving for Europe she'd tried a number of times to call him, but he had gone out of his way to avoid her and had staunchly refused to return her messages. After finding the apartment, Joanna had written a letter to give him the address so he could write to her when he felt he wanted to do so. Instead he'd just shown up and rung the doorbell one foggy, rainy winter day.

If it hadn't been for a sense of guilt over how far Carlton had come to visit, Joanna wouldn't have seen him on that trip. As it was, she let him stew in his room at the Gritti Palace for a number of days before calling. They met for lunch at Harry's Bar, Carlton's choice, and although the conversation was painful at first, they managed to come to an understanding of sorts, which at least began a correspondence. The correspondence had led to two other visits by Carlton to La Serenissima, as the Venetians of old had called their fair city. Each visit was more pleasant than the previous for Joanna, yet not entirely comfortable. The perspective of her year abroad made her view Carlton as being progressively limited by the dedication medicine required. Yet the ultimate result of the contact was a truce in which they admitted they cared for one another but felt their current "un-engaged" status was appropriate, enabling each to pursue their own interests.

Another series of bumps and thuds made Joanna again glance around the plane's interior. She was amazed that no one else appeared to be upset. Then the turbulence ended as suddenly as it had begun. Joanna looked out the window again but nothing had changed. She wondered how clear air could possibly make the plane behave as if it were a land vehicle driving over potholes.

As the flight grew calmer, Joanna couldn't dismiss the nagging feeling that her life was not complete despite all the gaiety, the traveling, and the intellectual stimulation.

Deborah was convinced that Joanna's restlessness had something to do with her rejection of traditional female goals: house, husband, children. But Joanna had located a different source. Seeing the Italians' continual love affair with infants left her wondering about the fate of her harvested eggs.

Increasingly she was tempted to find out what became of them. For a long time, Deborah pooh-poohed her curiosity, but on the eve of their homecoming, her friend had surprised her with a stunning reversal.

"Wouldn't it be interesting to find out what kind of children resulted from our eggs?" she asked over their last Venetian supper.

Joanna had put her glass of wine down and had looked into her roommate's dark eyes for some explanation. She was confused. She'd asked the same question a month previously, and it had evoked an angry reaction with Deborah accusing her of being obsessed.

"What do you think are our chances of finding anything out?" Deborah asked, seemingly oblivious to Joanna's reaction.

"It might be hard considering the contracts we signed," Joanna said.

"Yeah, but that was more to ensure our anonymity," Deborah said. "We didn't want anyone coming after us for child support or anything like that."

"I think it works both ways,' Joanna said. "The Wingate Clinic certainly didn't want us coming after the kids and demanding maternal rights."

"I suppose you're right," Deborah said. "Too bad, though. It would be interesting even if it were only to be sure we can have kids. You know, there are no guarantees of fertility these days. I'm sure all those people we saw out there in the Wingate Clinic would attest to that."

"I can imagine," Joanna said, still bewildered by Deborah's turnaround. "I'd like to find out myself. So how about we call the Wingate when we get back and see what they say? There can't be any harm in asking."

"Good idea," Deborah had said.

That was a day and an ocean ago. Now the plane's intercom system crackled to life and brought Joanna back to the present. The captain's voice announced that they were soon to start their initial descent into Boston. He added that he was going to turn on the seat-belt light, and he wanted to make sure that everyone was buckled up.

Joanna checked her seat belt to make certain it was fastened. As a rule she always wore her seat belt during flights, whether the seat-belt light was on or not. A quick glance at Deborah's revealed it too was secure. Returning her attention to the view out the window, she noticed there'd been a change. The tundra had been replaced by dense forest broken by widely spaced farms. She guessed they were over Maine, which was a good sign as far as she was concerned. It meant that Massachusetts wasn't that far off.