Stephen Burns - The Wait

Illustration by Janet Aulisio

The copy of People magazine on Alicia’s lap was standard waiting room fare, dog-eared and four months out of date. It had been open to the same place for several minutes, far longer than it would take anyone to read the single simply-worded paragraph captioning the two-page photo spread.

“Is this your first time, dear?”

Alicia blinked, then looked uncertainly at the woman sitting next to her. “Excuse me?”

The woman was what some of her friends would call a foxy granny. A trim and well-maintained late fifties, maybe even older, with long moonlight gray hair cascading over her shoulders. She was casually dressed in jeans, sandals, and a loose forest green silk blouse. Her long fingers worked a crochet hook with almost mechanical precision, pulling fine blue cotton thread from a bag at her feet and turning it into tighdy woven fabric.

She smiled, revealing a lifetime’s worth of laugh lines around her eyes. “I asked if this was your first time.”

Alicia tried to make herself get with the program, and managed to produce an unconvincing smile. “Uh huh. First time.”

“I thought so. You’ve already been in for the amnio?”

Her smile thinned. “Yeah, and boy wasn’t it fun?”

“And now you’re waiting.”

“That’s right,” Alicia agreed in a leaden tone. “I’m waiting.”

She didn’t really want to be there. Wouldn’t have been, either, except that she didn’t have much choice in the matter. Jacob Isaac Goldman, the owner of, creative force behind, and absolute authority over Goldman Architectural Design Associates had come down to her workroom bearing two fresh hot Kona coffees—her favorite kind. He’d made himself at home by sitting on one of her workbenches, and given her coffee and hearty congratulations on what he referred to as the “blessed event.”

J.I. was what she and everyone at GADA called him, and he was a terrific boss. Alicia was the firm’s Chief Nerd. That was even what he’d had painted on her door in real gold leaf after she’d called herself that one time. Her job was to keep GADA’s multitude of computers running at peak efficiency, printers and plotters grinding out the paper, net connections stable, and to manage software installation and upgrades. A penny-pinching, elbow-jogging, computer-hating neoluddite like her previous boss could make a task like that an absolute misery.

J.I. made it the best job she’d ever had. GADA was a great place to work. Nice people, the hottest new equipment, one hell of a dental plan. The bennies were grade A all the way.

Except that one had strings attached.

“It used to take several weeks,” the woman said. “The waiting, I mean. Before that, this stuff wasn’t even possible.”

“Progress marches on, I guess,” Alicia replied glumly. Sometimes it marched right over top of you.

“So you’re what, almost into your second trimester?”

Alicia frowned down at her squarish, fireplug body. “I didn’t think it showed.”

The woman laughed. “I had three, and I’m here with my daughter Penny, who’s on her third. That’s helped make me pretty good at reading the signs that say ‘baby on board.’ ” She lowered her voice as if confiding a secret. “Besides, you’re being here gives me a pretty fair idea of how far along you are.”

“Yeah, I guess it would.” Alicia glanced at her watch once again. Fifteen or so minutes to go. The waiting was getting to her, but she wasn’t ready to deal with what would happen when it ended.

“You seem kind of nervous. You shouldn’t be. There’s really nothing to worry about.”

That was just how J.I. had put it. GADA’s health plan would pick up the tab for everything. After the baby was born she could take extended maternity leave. Or, he hoped since she was so dam indispensable, come back part or full time for a substantial pay premium. Come back with the baby in tow, of course. Bassinets were nothing new in the GADA offices, and she would also have free use of the first class daycare center right there in the building. Any help she needed managing both a job and a baby, all she had to do was ask.

GADA was a small enough firm for everyone to have a pretty clear understanding of her situation, the boss included. This was his gentle way of acknowledging her single parent status, and letting her know he would do everything he could to accommodate it.

There was, he repeated, nothing to worry about. She hadn’t been worried.

Then.

“I’m not worried,” Alicia said, trying to sound more confident than she felt. “Just nervous.”

“There’s nothing to it. Even if a problem is found in the genescan, the therapy isn’t that much different than another amniocentesis.”

“I know.”

“Is there a…” The woman hesitated a moment, even her crochet hook halting mid-stitch. “Is there a special problem you think they might find?”

Before Alicia could answer that, the woman continued on in a rush. “I’m not trying to be nosy, it’s just that I’ve seen what they can do. In my daughter Penny’s case they’re checking for Tourette’s and Down’s. Penny is fine, and so is her older brother Jimmy, but her younger brother Ricky has to live in a group home. The Tourette’s is on Hal’s side. Hal’s her husband, and has a very mild case that’s being treated with medication. Penny’s first, Olivia, was normal. Her second, Donny, tested positive for Down’s, had in-utero gene therapy, and came out just fine.”

“I’m glad.” Alicia shook her head. “No, nothing like that—at least that I know of. The only reason I’m here is because it’s a rule where I work.”

They had just about finished up the Konas when J.I. had sighed, his smile fading. He looked Alicia in the eye, his expression turning somber. “You’ve maybe heard that I have a son who is institutionalized,” he said in a soft, toneless voice.

“I guess I might have,” she admitted evasively.

“Well, it’s true. He was Mandy and my second child, and his name is Leonard. We call him Lenny, but his name should really be Lesch-Nyhan Syndrome. That’s the name of the disease he has, and pretty much what he is. First, he’s severely mentally retarded.”

Alicia waited while J.I. paused for a sip of coffee, knowing from his face and posture that there was more to come. Worse.

J.I. shrugged. “That wouldn’t be so bad; he could have a life with that. But with LNS that’s the least of his troubles. He’s in such constant physical pain that five times a day they have to give him injections of enough painkiller to knock down an elephant. Even still, he hurts.”

“I’m sorry,” Alicia said, feeling the raw but tightly controlled pain radiating from him while he told this.

“God should be sorry.” His shoulders slumped and he regarded her with haunted eyes. “Ah, I don’t mean that. But there’s worse yet. Because of the LNS he suffers from an extreme form of something called autophagia. What that means is he bites and chews on himself. Unless he’s restrained he gnaws on his own arms and fingers like a dog with a bone, would take them right down to the bone if we let him. He has to wear a plastic thing in his mouth, not only to keep him from doing that, but also to stop him from biting his own lips off.”

Alicia could only stare back at him, unable to imagine living with such a terrible thing, and being able to tell about it so calmly.

“He probably won’t live much longer, and God willing, he won’t. Eight years of pure unadulterated hell his life has been. Eight years of dumb drugged whimpering misery.”