Даниэла Стил - All That Glitters

Sam and Tamar’s son was born in March, two weeks late, and poor Tamar labored for two days. She had complications after the birth, and Sam took care of both of them, and fell in love with the baby boy they named Nathan. His middle name was Isaac, for Sam’s father, according to Jewish tradition, using the name of a deceased family member.

Coco went to Saint Petersburg in Russia with Ian in the spring when he surfaced again, and he had started giving her his manuscripts to read when he returned with the first draft. It was extraordinary sharing the process with him. He valued her opinion, and she was judicious and sparing with the comments she made. He was a masterful writer and it was an honor to read his new work.

Without their noticing it, the time passed, and the years grew like a string of beads. Ian went to New York on business to see his publisher, and she went with him to see Sam, and eventually their second baby, Hannah. And then Ruth was born ten months later. Tamar was still helping him with the business but was too busy most of the time, and she got pregnant with their fourth baby just as quickly, another boy. Sam had changed his father’s business considerably and it wasn’t just an accounting firm now. He was a tax advisor to some hard-hitting clients, frequently referred by estate attorneys who respected him. His mother objected strenuously to any changes he made, and Tamar wasn’t sure of them either, but Sam had started to enjoy what he was doing when it became his business and he could mold it the way he wanted. It was his consolation prize for losing his father.

—

There was never any question of Coco and Ian becoming an official couple, but they always stayed together when he wasn’t on one of his sabbaticals. He stayed at her house now, with his dog. Bruce lived in the kitchen or in the room Ian used as an office. Ian had had to give his sublet back to the Roman chef when he came to reclaim it. Ian had his own office in her house now, and he came and went as he chose without comment from her.

They had been together for four years. Coco was twenty-eight, and Ian forty-five, and he stood in as a benevolent uncle to Bethanie. They still had long conversations over breakfast every day before she went to school. She called him Mr. Ian, as he had told her to, which was a joke between them, since he didn’t want to be her stand-in father, although in many ways he was, whether he admitted it or not. And Leslie and Coco had a chic office in Knightsbridge now, and ran a very successful business.

Ian and Coco were just back from a weekend in Prague, and Coco found Bethanie listless when she got home. She was running a fever. She thought it was the flu, gave her some medicine to bring the fever down, but she was worse the next day. She called the pediatrician, and it persisted for a week. The doctor suggested Coco bring her in, and maybe run a few tests. It could be strep, mononucleosis, or a number of other things, or just a nasty virus. Coco drove her to the doctor on the fifth day. They did a blood draw. Coco took her for some ice cream and a balloon afterward, and Bethanie didn’t want to get out of the car.

Ian reassured Coco that night, but she didn’t like the way Bethanie looked. She worried about things like meningitis, but her pediatrician had reassured her that she’d be much sicker if she had that, or even dead by then, which sent chills down Coco’s spine.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Ian said when they went to bed that night, and in the morning there was no change. It was unnerving waiting for the test results. The doctor called when Coco was about to leave for work on Monday. She had a meeting and the nanny was there to be with Bethanie, who had stayed home from school again.

The doctor sounded concerned when Coco answered the phone. “I don’t have good news,” she said. “Something turned up in the bloodwork that I didn’t expect.”

“Meningitis?” Coco sounded panicked. Ian wasn’t back from the gym yet. He had errands to do that morning.

“No. She has too many white blood cells and too few red blood cells. She could be showing the early signs of leukemia.” She said the words and Coco felt them like a knife piercing her heart. Bethanie had had a checkup recently with no sign of it. “I’d like to get her in to see an oncologist today if possible. We should get on this quickly.” Coco felt like she was going to faint and had to sit down.

“Oh my God. How could that happen?”

“It does. It’s the second case I’ve seen recently. I’ll call you back after I speak to the oncologist and find out when he can see you.”

She called back half an hour later. “He said to bring her in now. Can you do that?”

“Of course.” The doctor gave her the address, and she picked Bethanie up in her pajamas, put a coat over them, and settled her in the car, in her car seat. She left the house in less than ten minutes, and Coco called Leslie to say she wasn’t coming in.

They were at the doctor fifteen minutes later. Coco carried Bethanie inside and set her down gently in the waiting room. She was afraid of another blood draw, and Bethanie started to cry as soon as Coco set her down. A nurse distracted her with a balloon and a toy, and they waited to see the oncologist, who examined Bethanie, and looked at the tests the pediatrician had sent him. He met with Coco in his office, while the nurse played with Bethanie in the exam room, but all she wanted to do was lie down and clutch the blanket she had brought with her.

Coco looked at the doctor across his desk. “How bad is it?” Bethanie was the love of her life, and the only family she had. The doctor could see all of it in Coco’s eyes.

“It’s not good. I don’t like it. I never do. I’d like to get a spinal tap and a bone marrow biopsy. That should tell us the whole story. If it is leukemia, we have good results with children Bethanie’s age, depending on what kind it is.”

Coco felt sick as she listened, and he sent them directly to the hospital. Two hours later, both tests were administered with Bethanie under anesthesia. It was Coco’s worst nightmare come true. She called Ian at the house, and he was waiting for them when they got home, looking shell-shocked. He looked worse than Coco.

The oncologist called her back the next day, after the longest night of Coco’s life. She had acute myelogenous leukemia, AML, supposedly the easiest to cure, and she needed to start chemotherapy as soon as possible. “We caught it early,” he reassured her. “I’d like to get her started on chemo by the end of this week.” Coco couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her perfect little girl who laughed and played all the time had leukemia, and if they didn’t win the fight, she could die. She couldn’t bear the thought of it. She asked him a blunt question then.

“How good is treatment here? Should I take her back to the States?”

“You could,” he said, without taking offense. It was a reasonable question, since they had the option to do that, as Americans.

“They do great work with kids in Boston, and so does Sloan Kettering in New York. The French are very strong too, better than we are in some areas.”

“Can we wait till tomorrow to make a decision?” she asked him, and he nodded. “I’d like to call some people in New York. I’ll call you back tomorrow.”

“You have some time. We can’t drag our feet, but you certainly have the time to explore your options. Call me anytime.” He gave her his cellphone number, and she thanked him and hung up. Her head was spinning, Ian was at the gym, and she called Sam as soon as she hung up. She sounded terrible when he answered. Her voice was shaking and she sounded sick.

“What’s wrong?” He was still her go-to person for every disaster that happened to her. She closed her office door before she answered him, and then started to cry at last.