Jodi Picoult - Handle with Care

“Yes.” What had you wanted to call me instead? Suzy, Margaret, Theresa?

“You’re very good,” Juliet Cooper said, shyly. “In court, I mean.”

There was three feet of space between us. Why wasn’t either of us crossing it? I had imagined this moment so many times, and it always ended with my mother holding me tight, as if she needed to make up for ever having let me go.

“Thank you,” I said. Here’s what I hadn’t realized: the mother you haven’t seen for almost thirty-six years isn’t your mother, she’s a stranger. Sharing DNA does not make you fast friends. This wasn’t a joyous reunion. It was just awkward.

Well, maybe she was as uncomfortable as I was; maybe she was afraid to overstep her bounds or assumed I held a grudge against her for giving me up in the first place. It was my job, then, to break the ice, wasn’t it? “I can’t believe that I spent all this time looking for you and you turned up on my jury,” I said, smiling. “It’s a small world.”

“Very,” she agreed, and went dead silent again.

“I knew I liked you during voir dire,” I said, trying to make a joke, but it fell flat. And then I remembered something else Juliet Cooper had said during jury selection: She used to be a stay-at-home mother. She’d only gone back to work when her children went to high school. “You have kids. Other kids.”

She nodded. “Two girls.”

For an only child, that was remarkable: Not only had I found my birth mother but I had gained siblings. “I have sisters,” I said out loud.

At that, something shuttered in Juliet Cooper’s eyes. “They are not your sisters.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-”

“I was going to write you a letter. I was going to send it to the Hillsborough court and ask them to forward it to you,” she said. “Listening to Charlotte O’Keefe brought it all back for me: there are just some babies who are better off not being born.” Juliet stood up abruptly. “I was going to write you a letter,” she repeated, “and ask you not to contact me again.”

And just like that, my birth mother abandoned me for the second time in my life.

When you’re adopted, you may have the happiest life in the world, but there’s always a part of you that wonders if you’d been cuter, quieter, an easy delivery-well, maybe then your birth mom wouldn’t have given you up. It’s silly, of course-the decision to give a child up for adoption is made months in advance-but that doesn’t keep you from thinking it all the same.

I had gotten straight A’s in college. I’d graduated at the top of my law school class. I did this, of course, to make my family proud of me-but I didn’t specify which family I was talking about. My adoptive parents, sure. But also my birth parents. I think there was always a hidden belief that if my birth mother stumbled across me and saw how smart I was, how successful, she couldn’t help but love me.

When in fact, she couldn’t help but leave me.

The door of the conference room opened, and Charlotte slipped inside. “There was a reporter in the ladies’ room. She came after me with a microphone while I was going into a-Marin? Have you been crying?”

I shook my head, although it was clear that I was. “Something in my eye.”

“ Both of them?”

I stood up. “Let’s go,” I said brusquely, and I left her to follow in my wake.

Dr. Mark Rosenblad, who treated you at Children’s Hospital in Boston, was my next witness. I decided to shake myself off autopilot and give the performance of a lifetime for the juror who’d taken Juliet Cooper’s place, who happened to be a fortyish man with thick glasses and an overbite. He smiled at me as I directed all my questions about Rosenblad’s qualifications in his general direction.

With my luck, I’d lose the trial and have this guy ask me out on a date.

“You’re familiar with Willow, Dr. Rosenblad?” I said.

“I’ve treated her since she was six months old. She’s a great kid.”

“What type of OI does she have?”

“Type III-or progressively deforming OI.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s the most severe form of OI that isn’t lethal. Children who have Type III will have hundreds of broken bones over the course of a lifetime-not just from contact but sometimes caused by rolling over in their sleep or reaching for something on a shelf. They often develop severe respiratory infections and complications because of the barrel shape of their rib cages. Often Type III kids have hearing loss or loose joints and poor muscle development. They’ll get severe scoliosis that requires spinal rodding or even having the vertebrae fused together-although that’s a tricky decision, because from that moment on, the child won’t grow any taller, and these kids have short stature to begin with. Other complications can include macrocephaly-fluid on the brain-cerebral hemorrhage caused by birth trauma, brittle teeth, and for some Type IIIs, basilar invagination-the second vertebra moves upward and cuts off the opening in the skull where the spinal cord passes through to the brain, causing dizziness, headache, periods of confusion, numbness, or even death.”

“Can you tell us what the next ten years will be like for Willow?” I asked.

“Like many kids her age with Type III OI, she’s been on pamidronate since she was a baby. It’s improved the quality of her life significantly-prior to bisphosphonates, Type III kids would rarely walk and would have been wheelchair-bound. Instead of having several hundred breaks in her life, thanks to the pamidronate, she may have only a hundred-we’re not sure. Some of the research that’s coming back now through teenagers who began getting infusions as babies, like Willow, shows that the bones-when they do break- aren’t breaking along normal fracture patterns, and that makes them more difficult to treat. The bone’s getting denser because of the infusions, but it’s still imperfect bone. There’s also some evidence of jawbone abnormalities, but it’s unclear whether that’s related to the pamidronate or just part of the dentinogenesis that goes with OI. So some of these complications might occur,” Dr. Rosenblad said. “In addition, she’ll still have breaks, and surgeries to repair them. She was recently rodded in one thigh; I imagine the other will follow suit. Eventually she’ll have spinal surgery. She’s had pneumonia annually. Virtually all Type IIIs develop some sort of chest wall abnormalities, vertical collapse, and kyphoscoliosis, all of which lead to lung disease and cardiopulmonary distress. A number of individuals with Type III die due to respiratory or neurological complications, but with any luck, Willow will be one of our success stories-and will go into adulthood and live a fully functional and important life.”

For a moment, I just stared at Dr. Rosenblad. Having met you, and talked to you, and even seen you struggling to wheel yourself up an incline or reach for something on a counter that was too tall, I found it hard to conceive that all these medical nightmares awaited you. It was, of course, the hook Bob Ramirez and I had planned to hang this lawsuit on from the get-go, but even I had come to take your life for granted.

“If Willow does survive into adulthood, will she be able to take care of herself?”

I couldn’t look at Charlotte while I asked this; I didn’t think I could stand to see her face at the use of if instead of when.

“She’s going to need someone to take care of her, to some extent, no matter how independent she becomes. There are always going to be breaks and hospitalizations and physical therapy. Holding down a job will be difficult.”

“Beyond the physical challenges,” I asked, “will there be emotional challenges as well?”