Jodi Picoult - Handle with Care

“So your advice would have been to wait and see, regardless?”

I stared at him. Put that way, it didn’t seem like I’d made a mistake. “But the skull,” I said. “My technician pointed it out-”

“Did she say to you that she thought there might be a medical issue?”

“No, but-”

“She said it was a very clear picture of the brain.” He looked up at me. “Yes, your ultrasound technician called attention to something unusual-but not necessarily symptomatic. It might have been a technical issue with the machine, or the position of the transducer, or just a damn good scan.”

“But it wasn’t,” I said, feeling tears claw at the back of my throat. “It was OI, and I missed it.”

“You’re talking about a procedure that isn’t a conclusive test for the presence of OI. Or in other words, had the patient been seeing another physician instead of you, the same thing would have happened. That’s not malpractice, Piper. That’s sour grapes, on the part of the parents.” Guy frowned. “Do you know of any physician who would have diagnosed OI based on the eighteen-week ultrasound of a demineralized calvarium, a shortened femur, and no obvious skeletal fractures?”

I glanced down at the table. I could nearly see my own reflection. “No,” I admitted. “But they would have sent Charlotte for further testing-a more advanced ultrasound, and a CVS.”

“You’d already suggested further testing once to the patient,” Guy pointed out. “When her quad screen came back with a greater chance of having a Down syndrome baby.”

I met his gaze.

“You advised amniocentesis then, didn’t you? And what was her response?”

For the first time since I’d been handed that little blue folder, I felt the knot in my chest release. “She was going to have Willow no matter what.”

“Well, Dr. Reece,” the lawyer said. “That sure as hell doesn’t sound to me like wrongful birth.”

I started lying all the time.

At first it was just tiny white lies: responses to questions like “Ma’am, are you okay?” when the dental receptionist called my name three times and I didn’t hear her; or when a telemarketer phoned and I said that I was too busy to do a survey, when in fact I’d been sitting at the kitchen table staring into space. Then I began to lie in earnest. I’d cook a roast for dinner, completely forget it was in the oven, and tell Sean as he sawed through the blackened char that it clearly was the shoddy cut of meat the market had started stocking. I’d smile at neighbors and tell them, when they asked, that we were all doing well. And when your kindergarten teacher called me up and asked me to come to school because there had been an incident, I acted as if I had no idea what might have upset you in the first place.

When I arrived, you were sitting in the empty classroom in a tiny chair beside Ms. Watkins’s desk. The transition to public school had been less divine than I’d expected it to be. Yes, you had a full-time aide paid for by the state of New Hampshire, but I had to argue every last right for you-from the ability to go to the bathroom by yourself to the chance to interact in gym class when the play wasn’t too strenuous and you weren’t in danger of suffering a break. The good news was that this took my mind off the lawsuit. The bad news was that I wasn’t allowed to stay and make sure you were doing all right. You were in a classroom with new kids who didn’t know you-and who didn’t know about OI. When I asked you after your first day what you did in school, you told me how you and Martha played with Cuisenaire rods, how you were on the same team for Capture the Flag. I’d been thrilled to hear about this new friend and asked if you wanted to invite her over to the house. “I don’t think she can, Mom,” you told me. “She has to cook dinner for her family.”

As far as I knew, the only friend you’d made in this class was your aide.

Your eyes flickered toward me when I shook the teacher’s hand, but you didn’t speak. “Hi, Willow,” I said, sitting down beside you. “I hear you had a little trouble today.”

“Do you want to tell your mom what happened, or should I?” Ms. Watkins asked.

You folded your arms and shook your head.

“Willow was invited to participate in some imaginary play with two children this morning.”

My face lit up. “But-that’s terrific! Willow loves to pretend.” I turned to you. “Were you being animals? Or doctors? Space explorers?”

“They were playing house,” Ms. Watkins explained. “Cassidy was role-playing the mom; Daniel was the dad-”

“And they wanted me to be the baby,” you exploded. “I’m not a baby.”

“Willow’s very sensitive about her size,” I explained. “We like to say she’s just space-efficient.”

“Mom, they kept saying that because I was littlest I had to be the baby, but I didn’t want to be the baby. I wanted to be the dad.”

This, I could tell, was news to Ms. Watkins, too. “The dad?” I said. “How come you didn’t want to be the mom?”

“Because moms go into the bathroom and cry and turn on the water so no one can hear them.”

Ms. Watkins looked at me. “Mrs. O’Keefe,” she said, “why don’t you and I talk for a moment outside?”

For five whole minutes we drove in silence. “It is not okay for you to trip Cassidy when she walks by you for snack.” Although I did have to give you some credit for ingenuity-there wasn’t much you could do to hurt someone without also hurting yourself, and this was a pretty clever, if diabolical, tactic. “The last thing you want, Willow, is for Ms. Watkins to think you’re a troublemaker after one week of school.”

I did not tell you that, when we had gone into the hall and Ms. Wat kins asked if there was something going on at home that might lead to you acting out in school, I had flat-out lied. “No,” I said, after pretending to think a minute. “I can’t imagine where she got that from. But then again, Willow’s always had a remarkable imagination.”

“Well?” I prompted, still waiting for some recognition from you that you’d crossed a line you shouldn’t have. “Do you have something you want to say?”

I glanced in the rearview mirror for your response. You nodded, your eyes full of tears. “Please don’t get rid of me, Mommy.”

If I hadn’t been paused at a stoplight, I probably would have crashed into the car in front of me. Your narrow shoulders were shaking; your nose was running. “I’ll be better,” you said. “I’ll be perfect.”

“Oh, Willow, honey. You are perfect.” I felt trapped by my seat belt, by the ten seconds it took for the light to change. As soon as it did, I pulled into the first side street I could. I turned off the ignition and slipped into the backseat to take you out of your car seat. It had been adapted, like your infant car bed-this was upright but foam lined the straps, because otherwise even braking could cause a fracture. I gently untangled you and rocked you in my arms.

I had not talked to you about the lawsuit. I told myself that I was trying to keep you blissfully ignorant for as long as possible-much the same reason I hadn’t told Ms. Watkins about it. But the longer I put off this conversation, the greater the likelihood you’d find out about it from a classmate, and I couldn’t let that happen.

Had I really been trying to protect you? Or had I just been protecting myself? Would this be the moment I’d point to, months from now, as the beginning of the unraveling between us: yes, we were sitting on Appleton Lane, under a sugar maple, the moment that my daughter started to hate me .

“Willow,” I said, my throat suddenly so dry that I could not swallow. “If anyone’s been bad, it’s me. Do you remember when we went to visit that lawyer after your breaks at Disney World?”