Jodi Picoult - Handle with Care

I hesitated. “I don’t have a last name, exactly.”

The line went silent. “Was this an adoption case?”

“Well. Yes. Mine.”

The woman’s voice was frosty. “I’d suggest you try the courthouse,” she said, and she hung up.

I clutched the cell phone between my hands and watched a little boy shriek his way down a curved purple slide. He was Asian, his mother was not. Was he adopted? One day, would he be sitting here like I was, facing a dead end?

I dialed 411 again, and a moment later was connected to Maisie Donovan, the adoption search administrator for Hillsborough County. “You probably don’t remember me,” I said. “A few months ago, you sent me my adoption decree…”

“Name?”

“Well, that’s what I’m looking for…”

“I meant your name,” Maisie said.

“Marin Gates.” I swallowed. “It’s the craziest thing,” I said. “I saw a psychic today. I mean, I’m not one of those nutcases who goes to psychics or anything…not that I have a problem with that if it’s something, you know, you like to do every now and then…but anyway, I went to this woman’s house and she told me that someone named Maisie had information about my birth mother.” I forced a laugh. “She couldn’t give me much more detail, but she got that part right, huh?”

“Ms. Gates,” Maisie said flatly, “what can I do for you?”

I bowed my head toward the ground. “I don’t know where to go from here,” I admitted. “I don’t know what to do next.”

“For fifty dollars, I can send you your nonidentifying information in a letter.”

“What’s that?”

“Whatever’s in your file that doesn’t give away names, addresses, phone numbers, birth date-”

“The unimportant stuff,” I said. “Do you think I’ll learn anything from it?”

“Your adoption wasn’t through an agency; it was a private one,” Maisie explained, “so there wouldn’t be much, I imagine. You’d probably find out that you’re white.”

I thought of the adoption decree she’d sent me. “I’m about as sure of that as I am that I’m female.”

“Well, for fifty dollars, I’m happy to confirm it.”

“Yes,” I heard myself say. “I’d like that.”

After I wrote the address where I needed to send my check on the back of my hand, I hung up and watched the children bouncing around like molecules in a heated solution. It was hard for me to imagine ever having a child. It was impossible to imagine giving one up.

“Mommy!” one little girl cried out from the top of a ladder. “Are you watching?”

Last night on the message boards, I had first seen the labels a-mom and b-mom . They weren’t rankings, as I’d first thought-just shorthand for adoptive mom and birth mom. As it turned out, there was a huge controversy over the terminology. Some birth mothers felt the label made them sound like breeders, not mothers, and wanted to be called first mother or natural mother . But by that logic, my mom became the second mother, or the unnatural mother. Was it the act of giving birth that made you a mother? Did you lose that label when you relinquished your child? If people were measured by their deeds, on the one hand, I had a woman who had chosen to give me up; on the other, I had a woman who’d sat up with me at night when I was sick as a child, who’d cried with me over boyfriends, who’d clapped fiercely at my law school graduation. Which acts made you more of a mother?

Both, I realized. Being a parent wasn’t just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life.

Suddenly, I found myself thinking of Charlotte O’Keefe.

The patient was about thirty-five weeks into her pregnancy and had just moved to Bankton with her husband. I hadn’t seen her for any routine obstetric visits, but she’d been slotted into my schedule during my lunch break because she was complaining of fever and other symptoms that seemed to me like red flags for infection. According to the nurse who’d done the initial history, the woman had no medical problems.

I pushed open the door with a smile on my face, hoping to calm down what I was sure would be a panicking mother-to-be. “I’m Dr. Reece,” I said, shaking her hand and sitting down. “Sounds like you haven’t been feeling too well.”

“I thought it was the flu, but it wouldn’t go away…”

“It’s always a good idea to get something like that checked out when you’re pregnant anyway,” I said. “The pregnancy’s been normal so far?”

“A breeze.”

“And how long have you been having symptoms?”

“About a week now.”

“Well, I’ll give you a chance to change into a robe, and then we’ll see what’s going on.” I stepped outside and reread her chart while I waited a few moments for her to change.

I loved my job. Most of the time when you were an obstetrician, you were present at one of the most joyous moments of a woman’s life. Of course, there were incidents that were not quite as happy-I’d had my share of having to tell a pregnant woman that there’d been a fetal demise; I’d had surgeries where a placenta accreta led to DIC and the patient never regained consciousness. But I tried not to think about these; I liked to focus instead on the moment when that baby, slick and wriggling like a minnow in my hands, gasped its way into this world.

I knocked. “All set?”

She was sitting on the examination table, her belly resting on her lap like an offering. “Great,” I said, fitting my stethoscope to my ears. “We’ll start by listening to your chest.” I huffed on the metal disk-as an OB I was particularly sensitive to cold metal objects being placed anywhere on a person-and set it gently against the woman’s back. Her lungs were perfectly clear; no rasping, no rattles. “Sounds fine,” I said. “Now let’s check out your heart.”

I slid aside the neckline of the gown to find a large median sternotomy scar-the vertical kind that goes straight down the chest. “What’s that from?”

“Oh, that’s just my heart transplant.”

I raised my brows. “I thought you told the nurse that you didn’t have any medical problems.”

“I don’t,” the patient said, beaming. “My new heart’s working great.”

Charlotte didn’t start seeing me as a patient until she was trying to get pregnant. Before that, we were still just moms who made fun of our daughters’ skating coaches behind their backs; we’d save seats for each other at school parent nights; occasionally we’d get together with our spouses for dinner at a nice restaurant. But one day, when the girls were playing up in Emma’s room, Charlotte told me that she and Sean had been trying to get pregnant for a year, and nothing had happened.

“I’ve done it all,” she confided. “Ovulation predictors, special diets, Moon Boots-you name it.”

“Have you seen a doctor?” I asked.

“Well,” she said. “I was thinking about seeing you.”

I didn’t take on patients I knew personally. No matter what anyone said, you couldn’t be an objective physician if it was someone you loved lying on your operating table. You could argue that the stakes for an OB were always high-and there’s no question I gave 100 percent every time I walked into a delivery-but the stakes were just that tiny bit higher if the patient was personally connected to you. If you failed, you were not just failing your patient. You were failing your friend.

“I don’t think that’s the greatest idea, Charlotte,” I said. “It’s a tough line to cross.”

“You mean the whole you’ve-got-your-hand-up-my-cervix-now-sohow-can-you-look-me-in-the-eye-when-we-go-shopping part?”