Jodi Picoult - Handle with Care

I’m not sure which of us started to laugh first, and when the doorbell and phone rang simultaneously, we started to laugh even harder. Maybe I would change my message. Sorry, I can’t come to the phone right now. I’m holding my daughter, in her fifty-pound cast, over the toilet bowl.

I levered myself on my elbows, pulling you upright with me. The doorbell rang again, impatient. “Coming,” I called out.

“Mommy!” you screeched. “My pants!”

You were still half naked after our bathroom run, and getting you into your flannel pajama bottoms would be another ten-minute endeavor. Instead, I grabbed one of the trash bags still tucked into your cast and wrapped it around you like a black plastic skirt.

On the front porch stood Mrs. Dumbroski, one of the neighbors who lived down the road. She had twin grandsons your age, who had visited last year, stolen her glasses when she fell asleep, and set a pile of raked leaves on fire that would have spread to her garage if the mailman hadn’t come by at just the right moment. “Hello, dear,” Mrs. Dumbroski said. “I hope this isn’t a bad time.”

“Oh no,” I answered. “We were just…” I looked at you, wearing the trash bag, and we both started to laugh again.

“I was looking for my dish,” Mrs. Dumbroski said.

“Your dish?”

“The one I baked the lasagna in. I do hope you’ve had a chance to enjoy it.”

It must have been one of the meals that had been waiting for us on our return home from the hell that was Disney World. To be honest, we’d eaten only a few; the rest were getting freezer burn even as I stood there. There was only so much mac and cheese and lasagna and baked ziti that a human could stomach.

It seemed to me that if you made a meal for someone who was sick, it was pretty cheeky to ask whether or not she’d finished it so you could have your Pyrex back.

“How about I try to find the dish, Mrs. Dumbroski, and have Sean drop it off at your house later?”

Her lips pursed. “Well,” she said, “then I suppose I’ll have to wait to make my tuna casserole.”

For just a moment I entertained the thought of stuffing you into Mrs. Dumbroski’s chicken-wing arms and watching her totter under the weight of you while I went to the freezer, found her stupid lasagna, and threw it onto the ground at her feet-but instead I just smiled. “Thanks for being so accommodating. I’ve got to get Willow down for a nap now,” I said, and I closed the door.

“I don’t take naps,” you said.

“I know. I just said that to make her leave, so I wouldn’t kill her.” I twirled you into the living room and positioned a legion of pillows behind your back and under your knees, so that you could sit comfortably. Then I reached for your pajama bottoms and leaned over to tap the blinking button on the answering machine. “Left leg first,” I said, sliding the wide waistband over your cast.

You have one new message.

I slipped your right leg into the pants and shimmied them over the plaster at your hips.

Mr. and Mrs. O’Keefe…this is Marin Gates from the Law Offices of Robert Ramirez. We’ve got something we’d like to discuss with you.

“Mom,” you whined as my hands stilled at your waist.

I gathered the extra fabric into a knot. “Yes,” I said, my heart racing. “Almost done.”

This time, Amelia was in school, but we still had to bring Willow to the lawyer’s office. And this time, they were ready: beside the coffee machine were juice packs; next to the glossy architectural magazines was a small stack of picture books. When the secretary brought us back to meet the lawyers, we were not led to the conference room. Instead she opened the door to an office that was a hundred different shades of white: from the pickled wood floor to the creamy wall paneling to the pair of pale leather sofas. You craned your neck, taking this all in. Was it supposed to look like heaven? And if so, what did that make Robert Ramirez?

“I thought the couch might be more comfortable for Willow,” he said smoothly. “And I also thought she might like to watch a movie instead of listening to the grown-ups talk about all this boring stuff.” He held up the DVD of Ratatouille -your favorite, although he couldn’t have known that. After we’d watched it for the first time, we’d cooked the real deal for dinner.

Marin Gates brought over a portable DVD player and a very swanky pair of Bose headphones. She plugged it in, settled you on the couch, turned on the DVD, and popped the straw into a juice pack.

“Sergeant O’Keefe, Mrs. O’Keefe,” Ramirez said. “We thought it would be better to discuss this without Willow in the room, but we also realized that might be a physical impossibility given her condition. Marin’s the one who came up with the idea of the DVD. She’s also been doing a great deal of work these past two weeks. We reviewed your medical records, and we gave them to someone else to review. Does the name Marcus Cavendish ring a bell?”

Sean and I looked at each other and shook our heads.

“Dr. Cavendish is Scottish. He’s one of the foremost experts on osteogenesis imperfecta in the world. And according to him, it appears that you have a good cause of action of medical malpractice against your obstetrician. You remembered your eighteen-week ultrasound being too clear, Mrs. O’Keefe…That’s significant evidence that your obstetrician missed. She should have been able to recognize your baby’s condition then, long before broken bones were visible at the later ultrasound. And she should have presented that information to you at a time in your pregnancy…that might have allowed you to change the outcome.”

My head was spinning, and Sean looked utterly confused. “Wait a second,” he said. “What kind of lawsuit is this?”

Ramirez glanced at you. “It’s called wrongful birth,” he said.

“And what the hell does that mean?”

The lawyer glanced at Marin Gates, who cleared her throat. “A wrongful birth lawsuit entitles the parents to sue for damages incurred from the birth and care of a severely disabled child,” she said. “The implication is that if your provider had told you earlier on that your baby was going to be impaired, you would have had choices and options as to whether or not to continue with the pregnancy.”

I remembered snapping at Piper weeks ago: Do you always have to be so damn perfect?

What if the one time she hadn’t been perfect was when it came to you?

I was as rooted to my seat as you were; I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Sean spoke for me: “You’re saying my daughter never should have been born?” he accused. “That she was a mistake ? I’m not listening to this bullshit.”

I glanced at you: you had taken off your headphones and were hanging on every word.

As your father stood up, so did Robert Ramirez. “Sergeant O’Keefe, I know how horrible it sounds. But the term wrongful birth is just a legal one. We don’t wish your child wasn’t born-she’s absolutely beautiful. We just think that, when a doctor doesn’t meet the standard of care a patient deserves, someone ought to be held responsible.” He took a step forward. “It’s medical malpractice. Think of all the time and money that’s gone into taking care of Willow-and will go into taking care of her in the future. Why should you pay for someone else’s mistake?”

Sean towered over the lawyer, and for a second, I thought he might swat Ramirez out of his way. But instead he jabbed one finger into the lawyer’s chest. “I love my daughter,” Sean said, his voice thick. “I love her.”

He pulled you into his arms, yanking the headphone jack out so that the DVD player overturned, knocking over the juice box onto the leather couch. “Oh,” I cried, digging in my purse for a tissue to blot the stain. That gorgeous, creamy leather; it would be ruined.