Walking on Broken Glass (44 page)

This pregnancy was different, not just emotionally, but physically. Dr. Nolan mentioned toxemia and the issue of pregnancy-related diabetes. I didn’t remember gaining weight like this when I was pregnant with Alyssa. Not that I’d stopped to calculate the gallons of ice cream I’d consumed since the beginning of July. I trusted Dr. Nolan to figure it all out.

I changed into my fashionable, crinkled paper, baby chicken yellow exam wear and waited for Dr. Nolan. Molly amused herself with the assortment of dolls, bears, and toys around the exam room.

“You’d think she was a pediatrician,” Molly remarked, opening a quilted cotton ark filled with finger puppets of Noah, his family, and a few animals. “This is too cute.” Molly giggled as she slipped Noah on her finger. She started to slip on more of the ark, when Dr. Nolan stepped in.

“Hey, isn’t that a clever thing? Watch this.” Dr. Nolan showed Molly how the ark became a carrying pouch, handed it to her, and said, “All the way from Peru.”

“Are we on
Jeopardy
?” Molly looked at me with eye-rolling confusion.

“That ark was made in Peru,” Dr. Nolan said. “From all over the world—Africa, India, Kenya, Vietnam, Bangladesh— handcrafted. God blessed me when I opened my practice here. I wanted to bless mothers who didn’t have the advantages we have. I found A Greater Gift, and I’ve been gifting ever since.”

Molly was entranced. She traded Noah for a parrot flute.

“Don’t even think about it, girlfriend. This baby's already wiggling all over the place,” I only half-jokingly warned her.

“Speaking of advantages,” Dr. Nolan laughed, “how's Princess Leah? And where's Jean Luc?”

Molly's eyebrows met in the middle when she heard Dr. Nolan's name for Carl.

“He's on a mission in Pine Knoll, sent by the Federation Thorntons. They’re opening a new enterprise there. Lowercase ‘e’ enterprise.”

Dr. Nolan gooped up my growing belly with gel. “This stuff wasn’t always heated, you know. Now everything's supposed to be some kind of spa experience. How are we doing, Princess?”

Molly picked up a little drum. “No, you can’t play with that either,” I said.

“She's no fun,” said Molly.

“I hope that's a pretend pout or no Snickers Blizzard for you on the way home. And, to answer your question, Dr. Nolan, I don’t know. I’m not feeling like I did with Alyssa. Maybe I don’t remember feeling swollen. ”

“Um-hm. Hm. Yes.” Dr. Nolan scanned and looked at the ultrasound screen. The probe glided through the gel like a rollerball.

She scanned the screen. “What do you think, Molly?”

Molly squinted, tilted her head from right to left, poked the screen, and then leaned in. “Well, I’m not really sure.” She reached for my hand. “I think I’d have to say, based on the equipment, a girl?”

I closed my eyes as I felt the sting of bittersweet joy. God, I don’t want to cry in this room with my very best friend who is desperately trying to have a baby. I opened my eyes wide and hoped nothing would drip out.

“Can you do this?” Molly knew. I didn’t have to pretend to be brave.

I tapped Dr. Nolan's arm. “My turn.”

“Now, wait a minute.” She turned the monitor toward me. “Tell me what you think.” The probe skated across my tummy again.

“Molly, you either need glasses or biology class. That looks like a boy,” I said.

“Well, well,” Dr. Nolan said, and gently squeezed my arm. “God is quite the character. When He tells you all things are possible, you’d better listen, sister.” She set the probe down, stripped off her gloves, and grabbed one of my hands and one of Molly's. “You’re both right. Twins.”

Somehow between the hysterical teary-eyed blubbering and the spontaneous open-mouthed giggling, we made it to my car.

Dr. Nolan practically had to kick us out of her office. “No more baby viewing. Buy your own ultrasound machine. I hear tell some of those Hollywood types have. The Thorntons could buy one for every room in their house. Now take these pictures.” She handed them all to Molly. “Leah, you make an appointment for when Mr. Man's in town. Having two babies is a new game.”

In the car we called Carl, Devin, my dad, Peter, my in-laws. They all had the same reaction: stunned silence followed by questions, screeches of excitement, and more questions. I also called the staff at Brookforest and Rebecca with the same results. Carl wanted to drive home that afternoon. I reassured him I could email the pictures. Otherwise, I looked the same.

“Gloria's probably already calling Ivy League schools to find out if they can get a discount,” said Molly. She volunteered to drive my car home, so I could start multiplying by two.

“Glad I had that brilliant idea to get in touch with the contractor,” I said. “Now we have to figure out where these babies are … Babies.” My heart pounded with grateful disbelief. “Babies, Molly. I’m having ba-bies. Can you believe it?”

“It's so incredible. God is good, isn’t He?”

Her eyes were fixed on the Post Oak Road traffic, but I knew that hard stare was not simply concentration. “Molly, you’re so right. God is good. He put you in my life, and you’ve saved me over and over again. I feel like I can never repay you. I pray for you and Devin all the time. Your blessing will come, too, I know it. Little Molly and Devin babies …”

She held up her hand, “Stop. No little babies.”

“But, Molly, you and Devin will go back to
in vitro
or you could adopt. A private adoption.”

Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “Leah,” her voice was raspy, “we postponed
in vitro
because … because I have breast cancer.”

“Believe me, this isn’t what I had in mind for telling you. It was too much to hide, especially when you’d go for broke talking about babies.” She said, “But you’re my crazy best friend, and I expect that from you.”

We stopped about forty-two seconds after Molly dropped the news because I threatened to throw up if she didn’t. We still sat in the car in the parking lot of a nail salon, a dry cleaners, and a bakery. A perfect setting to discuss your best friend's almost accident-inducing announcement of cancer.

My best friend has cancer.

Sky-high joy followed by plummeting pain.

Molly explained she’d gone for a routine mammography because of her family history. “The Breast Center called after the first mammogram and asked me to come back. That's happened before, so I didn’t think it was anything to be concerned about. But after that appointment, they said I needed a needle biopsy.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? Call me?”

Molly smiled at the question. “Your dance card was full, sister. Besides, the biopsy could’ve come back clean.”

“But it didn’t. And you still didn’t call. Now I’m sad, and I’m puzzled.”

“Devin and I needed to sort things out. We wanted to know what we’d be up against before we started telling everyone. We figured it’d be easier that way.”

She told me the oncologist reported it was stage 1, which meant it hadn’t gone to the lymph nodes. “If there aren’t any cancerous cells around it, and Dr. Warriner said she doesn’t suspect there will be, the survival rate's usually one hundred percent.”

“When are you getting it removed? Isn’t there something you can do now?”

“The lumpectomy is scheduled for next week, and the game plan is five to seven weeks of radiation therapy, five days a week. Pray. You can pray now.”

Instead of driving home right away, Molly and I went to the bakery shop we saw when we’d pulled into the parking lot.

We ordered croissants with chicken salad and a large slab of carrot cake. I could’ve skipped the chicken salad, but Molly said eating for three required some protein.

I squeezed a lemon in my water. “Molly, I’m so sorry. For weeks now, you’ve focused on me. Heck, for weeks, I’ve focused on me. And now, here you’re facing this awful news, and I feel like a slug.”

“How could you know? Don’t be upset with yourself. Before we got the report, Devin and I thought about important stuff we had to do. Like turning the sprinklers on, changing the air conditioner filters, and dropping clothes off at the cleaners.”

“You’re kidding.” It wasn’t a question.

“Well, sort of. We decided to not think about it until we knew for sure. We just went on with the day to day stuff. And we prayed. I mostly prayed not to look like Carl if I had to lose my hair.”

I almost choked on my sandwich. “Now that would be a fright. He could loan you one of those toupees he never wears. They’re in boxes in our attic. I made sure to label them because opening one of those boxes can be scary. His mother bought those things, she said, for his self-esteem. I think she didn’t like his baldness because she thought it made her seem older.”

“Thanks, but I think I’ll pass on the hair rugs. Devin said I’d make a lovely bald woman,” she laughed. Molly's voice slid into serious when she said, “I couldn’t do this without him. He's my first best friend.”

Whatever twinge of silly jealousy vibrated in my heart, I hushed it just looking at Molly when she talked about her husband. Something inside her illuminated her face, her eyes, her body.

She scraped the cream cheese icing off her carrot cake and spread it on my slice. This dessert thing always seemed to work out in my favor.

“I’m not glad this happened. But it's made me realize what Devin means to me in ways I never expected. He sees in me what I can’t see in myself. Like he can reach into my soul, put it in my hand, and tell me, ‘Here's your gift. It's you.’ I don’t know how he manages to make me feel so special.” She wiped away tears and, when I saw the unabashed love in her eyes, I had to turn away for a moment. The brightness burned.