as hard as it had the first time she’d walked into this same room and laid eyes on Emerson.
“You’re Sam,” she said, glancing at the long-haired guy in the picture on Tara’s dresser. This Sam looked different. The guy in the picture was a boy. The short-haired guy on the bed, a man. He was slender. Not overtly masculine; macho had never appealed to her. Thick, jet-black lashes framed his blue eyes, and his lips were full and a little pouty. It was only the broad cut of his chin that saved him from being too pretty.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m waiting for Tara. You live in the dorm?”
“I’m the RA. Noelle.”
“Oh, yeah.” He sat up a little straighter, his back against the wall. Setting his notebook on the bed beside him, he folded his arms across his chest. “Tara told me about you. She thinks you’re cool.”
Noelle smiled and sat down in Emerson’s desk chair. “I’m glad she thinks so. I like her, too.” She nodded toward the notebook. “What are you working on?”
“Journal.” He grinned with the tiniest hint of embarrassment as he lifted the notebook from the bed and set it on his thigh. His arms were very tan and dusted with dark hair. “Thought I’d give it a try,” he said. “You know, writing down my deepest, darkest thoughts.”
She loved the answer. What guy journaled? If she hadn’t already pinned him as a rarity, she did now.
They talked for a while about UNC and his plans for law school. He told her he’d known Tara since they were kids, although Noelle already knew that. Actually, nothing he told her was new; Tara talked about him all the time. Words passed between them, but they could have been any words at all. They could have been talking about the weather or what they’d had for dinner the night before. It wasn’t the words that were being communicated. Something deeper was going on. Noelle felt it and she knew in all those melting, hungry organs of her body that he felt it, too. The way he held her gaze. The way he couldn’t stop smiling at her no matter what he was saying.
She offered him one of the granola bars and watched his tanned, perfect fingers slit open the wrapper. He took a bite, then licked a crumb from his lips, his blue eyes back on her. She pictured him in her bed, both of them nude. He was between her legs, slipping inside her. She didn’t even try to erase the image from her mind. If he had not been Tara’s, she would have asked him flat out, “Do you want to make love?” because that was her style. Why mince words? And if he were not Tara’s he would say yes. But he
19
Anna
There were few things I hated as much as having Haley under general anesthesia. For an hour or two or three, it was as though she was gone. I always tried to reassure myself that at least she was in no pain during the time she was out. Yet the goneness, the unreachableness, still scared me.
She’d received the transfusion a couple of days before and her red blood count had bounced back nicely, but now the surgeon was moving her port from one side of her sore chest to the other and aspirating her bone marrow at the same time. It was never ending, the torture they put her through. Haley’d been stoic when the surgeon told her his plans for today, but I had the feeling she would have chewed him out if Bryan hadn’t been present. She was on her good behavior around Bryan. I actually preferred her feisty side. I liked when she cussed out her doctors. Holding in her anger and frustration wasn’t a good thing. She wanted her Daddy to think she was a sweet girl, though—which she was most of the time, when she wasn’t loaded up on steroids and fighting for her life.
I didn’t think Haley totally grasped the implications of this bone marrow aspiration. They’d be looking at her MRD level. Minimum Residual Disease. If it was too high, it would mean the chemo was not doing the job and she’d need a bone marrow transplant. Going down that road terrified me. It would mean more grueling chemotherapy plus full-body radiation to destroy her immune system and all that simply to prepare her for the transplant itself. And of course a donor would have to be found. So if I’d been the praying type, I would have been praying for a very low MRD. Very, very low. Although it had required nearly two full years of treatment, chemo alone had taken care of the cancer when she was a toddler. I was hoping for the same outcome this time.
I made sure the staff had my cell number, then walked down to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee and to check in with my office. Bryan was on a job interview in Bethesda. He’d offered to cancel it when I told him about the surgery, but I encouraged him to go.
I didn’t go straight back to the East Wing, but walked instead to the neonatal intensive care unit. It wasn’t the first time since Haley’s relapse that I’d found myself wandering through the halls of the NICU, even though they now had the babies safely tucked away in private rooms and I wasn’t able to see them as I could years ago. I was actually glad. I wanted those babies to be out of sight.
My work occasionally took me to hospitals, and I always wound up trying to see the babies. The tiniest babies got to me. All those wires and tubes. Those little rib cages pumping air in and out, every breath looking like an effort. They were so vulnerable. Their dependence on others to protect them always cut into me.
Why did I do that to myself? Why did I look? Why did I search the features of the babies, looking for one who resembled Lily? I sometimes felt as though I couldn’t leave. I needed to stand guard. The nurses couldn’t watch every baby every minute. Even here in the remodeled NICU at Children’s, I searched for evil intentions in the face of each person I saw. That’s when I knew it was time to walk away. I became the director of the Missing Children’s Bureau in part because of my own pain and my passion, but also because I’d been able to hold on to my sanity. That sanity allowed me to distance myself from my own ordeal so that I could be rational as I kept the bureau functioning. That’s why I had to walk away when I began to imagine someone—one of the nurses? A total stranger?—coming into the nursery, detaching one of those fragile, helpless infants from her tubes and wires and slipping out the door with her.
I’d opted for a home birth with Haley for that reason alone. I’d never been the home-birth type. I wasn’t one of those women who distrusted the medical system or worried about having an unnecessary C-section because my obstetrician wanted to get out on the golf course. But I knew I wanted to give birth to Haley surrounded by trusted friends, by a midwife whose references I’d grilled for hours and a doula I’d known forever.
My phone rang as I walked toward the oncology unit and I checked the caller ID. Haley’s surgeon. I stopped walking and pressed the button on my Bluetooth. “How is she?” I asked.
“She’s in recovery,” he said. “She did great.”
“I’ll be right there.”
I called Bryan as I started walking again. “She’s in recovery,” I said. I could hear a woman’s voice in the background. Laughter. Was he at a job interview or what? For a moment, I felt a profound stab of distrust. Then I reminded myself once more that he was back in the area for Haley, not for me. I had to remember that.
