Jodie Picoult - Nineteen Minutes

Years ago, she used to lie in bed and imagine what her life would have been like had she not been a mother. She’d picture Joey bringing her a bouquet of dandelion weeds and clover; Peter falling asleep against her chest with the tail of her braid still clutched in his hand. She relived the clenching fist of labor pains, and the mantra she’d used to get through them: When this is done, imagine what you’ll have. Motherhood had painted the colors of Lacy’s world a bit brighter; had swelled her to the seams with the belief that her life could not possibly be more complete. What she hadn’t realized was that sometimes when your vision was that sharp and true, it could cut you. That only if you’d felt such fullness could you really understand the ache of being empty.

She had not told her patients-God, she hadn’t even told Lewis-but these days, when she lay in bed and imagined what her life would have been like had she not been a mother, she found herself sucking on one bitter word: easier.

Today Lacy was doing office visits; she’d gone through five patients and was about to move on to her sixth. Janet Isinghoff, she read, scanning the folder. Although she was another midwife’s patient, the policy of the group was to have each woman see all of the midwives, since you never knew who’d be on call when you delivered.

Janet Isinghoff was thirty-three years old, primigravid, with a family history of diabetes. She had been hospitalized once before for appendicitis, had mild asthma, and was generally healthy. She was also standing in the door of the examination room, clutching her hospital johnny shut as she argued heatedly with Priscilla, the OB nurse.

“I don’t care,” Janet was saying. “If it comes down to that, I’ll just go to a different hospital.”

“But that’s not the way our practice works,” Priscilla explained.

Lacy smiled. “Anything I can do here?”

Priscilla turned, putting herself between Lacy and the patient. “It’s nothing.”

“Didn’t sound like nothing,” Lacy replied.

“I don’t want my baby delivered by a woman whose son is a murderer,” Janet burst out.

Lacy felt her feet root on the floor, her breath go so shallow that she might as well have fielded a blow. And hadn’t she?

Priscilla turned crimson. “Mrs. Isinghoff, I think I can speak for the whole of the midwifery team when I say that Lacy is-”

“It’s all right,” Lacy murmured. “I understand.”

By now the other nurses and midwives were staring; Lacy knew that they would rally to her defense-tell Janet Isinghoff to find herself another practice, explain that Lacy was one of the best and most seasoned midwives in New Hampshire. But that hardly mattered, really-it wasn’t about Janet Isinghoff demanding to have another midwife deliver her child; it was that even after Janet had left, there would be another woman here tomorrow or the next day with the same uneasy request. Who would want the first hands touching her newborn to be the same hands that had held a murderer’s when he crossed the street; that had brushed his hair off his forehead when he was sick; that had rocked him to sleep?

Lacy walked down the hall to the fire door and ran up four flights of stairs. Sometimes, when she’d had a particularly difficult day, Lacy would take refuge on the roof of the hospital. She’d lie on her back and stare up at the sky and pretend, with that view, she could be anywhere on earth.

A trial was just a formality-Peter would be found guilty. It didn’t matter how she tried to convince herself-or Peter-otherwise; the fact was there between them at those horrible jail visits, immense and unmentionable. It reminded Lacy of running into someone you hadn’t seen for a while, and finding her bald and missing her eyebrows: you knew she was in the throes of chemotherapy, but pretended you didn’t, because it was easier that way for both of you.

What Lacy would have liked to say, if anyone had given her the podium on which to do it, was that Peter’s actions were just as surprising to her-as devastating to her-as they were to anyone else. She’d lost her son, too, that day. Not just physically, to the correctional facility, but personally, because the boy she’d known had disappeared, swallowed by this beast she didn’t recognize, capable of acts she could not conceive.

But what if Janet Isinghoff was right? What if it was something Lacy had said or done…or not said or done…that had brought Peter to that point? Could you hate your son for what he had done, and still love him for who he had been?

The door opened, and Lacy spun around. No one ever came up here, but, then again, she rarely left the floor this upset. It wasn’t Priscilla, though, or one of her colleagues: Jordan McAfee stood on the threshold, a sheaf of papers in his hand. Lacy closed her eyes. “Perfect.”

“Yes, that’s what my wife tells me,” he said, coming toward her with a wide smile on his face. “Or maybe it’s just what I wish she’d tell me…. Your secretary told me you were probably up here, and-Lacy, are you all right?”

Lacy nodded, and then she shook her head. Jordan took her arm and led her to a folding chair that someone had carted all the way up to the roof. “Bad day?”

“You could say that,” Lacy answered. She tried to keep Jordan from seeing her tears. It was stupid, she knew, but she didn’t want Peter’s attorney to think she was the kind of person who had to be treated with kid gloves. Then he might not tell her every blunt truth about Peter, and she wanted to hear that, no matter what.

“I needed you to sign some paperwork…but I can come back later…”

“No,” Lacy said. “This is…fine.” It was better than fine, she realized. It was sort of nice to be sitting next to someone who believed in Peter, even if she was paying him to do that. “Can I ask you a professional question?”

“Sure.”

“Why is it so easy for people to point a finger at someone else?”

Jordan sank down across from her, on the ledge of the roof, which made Lacy nervous, but, again, she couldn’t show it, because she didn’t want Jordan to think she was fragile. “People need a scapegoat,” he said. “It’s human nature. That’s the biggest hurdle we have to overcome as defense attorneys, because in spite of being innocent until proven guilty, the very act of an arrest makes people assume guilt. Do you know how many cops have unarrested someone? I know, it’s crazy-I mean, do you think they apologize profusely and make sure that person’s family and friends and co-workers all know it was a big mistake, or do they just sort of say, ‘My bad,’ and take off?” He met her gaze. “I’m sure it’s hard, reading the editorials that have already convicted Peter before the trial’s even started, but-”

“It’s not Peter,” Lacy said quietly. “They’re blaming me.”

Jordan nodded, as if he’d expected this.

“He didn’t do this because of how we raised him. He did it in spite of that,” Lacy said. “You have a baby, don’t you?”

“Yes. Sam.”

“What if he turns out to be someone you never thought he’d be?”

“Lacy-”

“Like, what if Sam tells you he’s gay?”

Jordan shrugged. “So what?”

“And if he decided to convert to Islam?”

“That’s his choice.”

“What if he became a suicide bomber?”

Jordan paused. “I really don’t want to think about something like that, Lacy.”

“No,” she said, facing him. “Neither did I.”

Philip O’Shea and Ed McCabe had been together for almost two years. Patrick stared at the photos on the fireplace mantel-the two men with their arms slung around each other, with a backdrop of the Canadian Rockies; a corn palace; the Eiffel Tower. “We liked to get away,” Philip said as he brought out a glass of iced tea and handed it to Patrick. “Sometimes, for Ed, it was easier to get away than it was to stay here.”