Jodi Picoult - Handle with Care

Charlotte began to mix the batter. She knew it in principle: one ingredient in a bowl is a start. But two ingredients in a bowl, well, that’s a whole story.

Here’s what Charlotte didn’t mention: that sometimes even the most careful baker can make a mistake. That the balance between the acid and the soda might be off, the ingredients not mixed, the salts trapped behind.

That you’d be left with a bitter taste in your mouth.

On the morning of the trial, I stayed in the shower for a very long time, letting the water strike my back like a punishment. Here it was: the moment I would face Charlotte in court.

I had forgotten the sound of her voice.

Besides the obvious difference, there was not much distinction between losing a best friend and losing a lover: it was all about intimacy. One moment, you had someone to share your biggest triumphs and fatal flaws with; the next minute, you had to keep them bottled inside. One moment, you’d start to call her to tell her a snippet of news or to vent about your awful day before realizing you did not have that right anymore; the next, you could not remember the digits of her phone number.

Once the shock had worn off when I was served, I had gotten furious. Who the hell did Charlotte think she was, ruining my life in order to bolster her own? Anger, though, is too fierce a flame to last for long, and when it burned out, I was left numb and wondering. Would she get what she wanted from this? And what did she want? Revenge? Money? Peace of mind?

Sometimes I woke up with words weighing down my tongue like stones, left over from a recurring nightmare where Charlotte and I met face-to-face. I had a thousand things to say to her, and not one of them ever came out. When I looked at her, to see why she wasn’t speaking, either, I noticed that her mouth had been sewn shut.

I had not gone back to work. The one time I’d tried, I had been shaking so hard when I got to the front door that I never went inside. I knew of other doctors who had been sued for malpractice and went back to their routines, but this lawsuit went beyond the question of whether or not I could have diagnosed osteogenesis imperfecta in utero. It wasn’t skeletal breaks I had not seen in advance but rather the wishes of a best friend whose mind I’d thought I knew inside out. If I had not been able to read Charlotte correctly, how could I trust myself to understand the needs of patients who were virtual strangers?

I had wondered for the first time about the terminology of running your own office as a doctor. It was called a practice. But shouldn’t we have gotten it right by the time we opened one?

We were, of course, taking a huge financial hit. I had promised Rob that I would go back to work by the end of the month, whether or not the trial was over. I had not specified, however, what sort of work I’d go back to. I still could not imagine myself shepherding a routine pregnancy. What about pregnancy was routine?

In the course of preparing with Guy Booker, I had gone back over my notes and my memories a thousand times. I almost believed him when he said that no physician would be blamed for not diagnosing OI at the eighteen-week ultrasound; that even if I had an inkling about it, the recommended course of action would have been to wait several weeks to see if the fetus was Type II or Type III. I had behaved responsibly as a doctor.

I just hadn’t behaved responsibly as a friend.

I should have been looking more closely. I should have pored over Charlotte’s records with the same thoroughness with which I would have pored over my own, had I been the patient. Even if I was in the right in a courtroom, I had failed her as a friend. And in a roundabout way, that was how I’d failed her as a doctor, too-I should have declined when she asked me to treat her in my practice. I should have known that somehow, some way, the relationship we had outside the examination room would color the relationship we had inside it.

The water in the shower was running cold now; I turned it off and wrapped a towel around myself. Guy Booker had given me very specific instructions on what I should wear today: no business suits, nothing black, hair loose around my face. I’d bought a twinset at T.J. Maxx because I never wore them but Guy said that it would be perfect. The idea was to look like an ordinary mom, a person any woman on the jury might identify with.

When I came downstairs, I heard music in the kitchen. Emma had left for the bus stop before I’d even gotten into the shower, and Rob-well, Rob had been at work by seven thirty every morning for the past three weeks. It was less of a burgeoning work ethic, I believed, than a burning desire to be out of the house by the time I awakened, just in case we’d have to have a civil conversation without Emma there to serve as a buffer.

“It’s about time,” Rob said as I walked into the kitchen. He reached over to the radio and turned down the volume, then pointed to a plate on the table that was piled high with bagels. “The store only had one pumpernickel,” he said. “But there’s also jalapeño-cheddar, and cinnamon-raisin-”

“But I heard you leave,” I said.

Rob nodded. “And I came back. Veggie cream cheese, or regular?”

I didn’t answer, just stood very still, watching him.

“I don’t know if I ever got around to telling you,” Rob said, “but the kitchen? It’s so much brighter, now that you painted it. You’d be a hell of an interior designer. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think you’re better suited to be an obstetrician, but still…”

My head was starting to pound. “Look, I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but what are you doing here?”

“Toasting a bagel?”

“You know what I mean.”

The toaster popped, Rob ignored it. “There’s a reason we have to say ‘for better or for worse.’ I’ve been a total asshole, Piper. I’m sorry.” He looked down at the space between us. “You didn’t ask for this lawsuit; it was lobbed at you. I have to admit, it made me think about things I thought I’d never have to think about again. But regardless of all that, you didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t provide any less than the standard of care for Charlotte and Sean. If anything, you went above and beyond.”

I felt a sob rise in my throat. “Your brother,” I managed.

“I don’t know how different my life would have been if he’d never been born,” Rob said quietly. “But I do know this: I loved him, while he was here.” He glanced up at me. “I can’t take back what I said to you, and I can’t erase my behavior these past few months. But I was hoping, all the same, that you might not mind me coming to court.”

I didn’t know how he’d cleared his schedule, or for how long. But I looked up at Rob and saw behind him the new cabinets I’d installed, the track of blue lighting, the warm copper paint on the walls, and for the first time I did not see a room that needed perfecting; I saw a home. “On one condition,” I hedged.

Rob nodded. “Fair enough.”

“I get the pumpernickel bagel,” I said, and I walked right into his open arms.

An hour before the trial was supposed to start, I really didn’t know whether or not my client was planning to show up. I’d tried to call her all weekend, and had not been able to reach her landline or her cell. When I reached the courthouse and saw the news crews lining the steps, I tried to phone her again.

You’ve reached the O’Keefes, the message machine sang.

That wasn’t exactly true, if Sean was proceeding with a divorce. But then, if I had learned anything about Charlotte, it was that the sound bite offered to the public might not be what was true behind the scenes, and to be honest, I didn’t particularly care, as long as she didn’t confuse her rhetoric when I had her on the witness stand.