Not My Daughter

'I didn't see one. But I wasn't looking. Now I have to teach a class. Do I dare leave my office?'

'You have to. You have a job. Go do it, while I make a few calls.'

Rick spent most of the day trying to plug the leak, but it had spread too far. The media was hungry for headlines, and the juicier the better. That meant the Zaganack story took on hyperbolic twists. The pact grew to twelve; the girls were the leaders of the senior class; Susan advocated teen pregnancy.

By day's end, she had received calls from two other magazines and Inside Edition, not to mention multiple messages from Sunny and Kate.

'Do not talk,' she advised Kate, who sounded frazzled.

'They called me at the barn and again at home. They're obsessed with our friendship and the idea of our daughters forming a pact. How do they know where I live? This is such a violation.'

Sunny was furious. 'Dan talked with the last one and threatened to sue for harassment. Of course, he doesn't have a case, because what's one phone call, but how did this get out, Susan, who told these people to call?'

Susan figured that Neal Lombard might have lit the match, but that others were fanning the flames. She kept hoping nothing would come of the calls, but that night, Inside Edition did a piece on high school pacts, with its reporter live on the steps of Susan's school citing the three Zaganack girls as the latest example.

The media inquiries continued into Tuesday and Wednesday, but, at some point, Susan tuned them out. On top of her usual work, she had a parent coffee to host, a grant application to file, and two drunk students and a bully to deal with-which wasn't to say she wasn't aware of the buzz around school. People were talking about Lily, about Susan, about the press.

Phil was decidedly unhappy.

That said, the buzz might have been in her own head. It was all well and good to try to stem a scandal, to fearfully surf the Web and assess the damage. But Lily's next sonogram was coming on fast, bringing with it a worry that drove the others from her mind.

Susan blessed Rick now. Pulling out all stops, he found the hospital with the most up-to-date machine and booked the most highly recommended and experienced radiologist to do the sonogram.

Early Thursday morning, they headed back to Boston. Forbidden to pee, Lily was uncomfortable, but she didn't complain. She was doing what had to be done, though she looked fearful and very much seventeen. Susan kept reminding her that amnio had ruled out complications, making CDH a simple problem. But the machine was a more sophisticated one, sensitive enough to pick up the slightest abnormality, and the doctor-a woman-was somber. Susan was intimidated, and she was thirty-five. She could only imagine what Lily felt.

Rick stayed with them, asking the doctor to back up here, explain this, repeat that, with an insistence Susan might not have had, vacillating as she was between fascination with the baby's features and dismay at the extent of the problem.

An hour later, Lily was squeezed in for an MRI, and an hour after that, for consultation with the surgeon with whom Rick had connected prior to the trip. This surgeon, too, came highly recommended. He was a specialist in treating congenital diaphragmatic hernia.

He had already talked with the radiologist who had done the sonogram and was able to compare today's pictures with those taken three weeks before. Sitting beside Lily and Susan, he showed her the changes.

'With the mildest cases of CDH, the condition remains steady,' the man explained gently, 'but you can see the difference three weeks has made. We use mathematical formulas to describe the degree of herniation, but I'd rather talk here in lay terms. Look at the two pictures. Look at the lungs. See how the one on the left is smaller than the one on the right in this newest shot?'

'It's teeny,' Lily cried out in dismay.

'Definitely smaller, because look here, the intestines, the liver, the kidneys are crowding it out. This kind of adverse movement in three weeks suggests a momentum that will prevent lung development and eventually affect the heart. Even if this child makes it to term, he won't have the means to survive outside the womb. Some parents believe that if that happens, it was meant to be.' He looked beyond Lily to Susan and Rick.

It was the moment of truth, Susan knew. If they didn't want this baby, now was the time to speak up. But the only thing she felt was that this child was part of her child, that it was already familiar to her, and that if she ever fought for anything in her life, it should be for this.

In that instant, she was fully committed. 'We want this baby to live.'

He smiled and looked at Lily, who nodded in agreement. 'Then we operate. This kind of case excites me, because we're catching it early. Correcting the abnormality now maximizes the baby's chances.'

Susan put an encouraging arm around Lily, who, sounding very mature, asked for details of the operation.

In clear terms, the doctor explained. 'We make two tiny incisions, one in your belly and one in your uterus, and we insert a tiny telescope into your baby's mouth.' When Lily made a sound, he squeezed her hand. 'Not at all hard for the baby. Don't forget, he doesn't use that mouth for anything much yet. We put the telescope into his trachea and leave a tiny balloon behind, blown up just enough to obstruct the windpipe.'

'Obstruct?' Lily asked in alarm.

The doctor smiled. 'The baby doesn't need that windpipe until the moment he's born, but a funny thing happens when we block it. The lung starts to grow,' he said. 'As the lung grows, it pushes those wayward internal organs back out of the chest cavity and away from the heart.' Again, he looked at Susan and Rick. 'It's remarkable, really.'

'How do you get the balloon out of his windpipe?' Lily asked, calmer again.

'Very simply. We do the beginnings of a cesarean section, lift the baby's head out of the uterus while the umbilical cord is still attached to the placenta and doing the breathing for him. Then we reach into his mouth and pull out the balloon. We cut the cord, and your son is born.'

Lily was momentarily rapt. 'And he'll be okay? This fixes the problem?'

'There's never a guarantee. But we've had remarkable success. Once we've blocked the windpipe, the organs grow normally. Minor surgery soon after birth closes the hole in the diaphragm.'

'What does minor surgery mean?'

'Low risk. We have it down to a science.'

'Will he have a scar?'

'A small one, but it'll look smaller the bigger he gets. Babies grow; scars don't.'

Susan wasn't bothered by scars, if the result was survival. 'Will Lily be able to carry to term?' she asked.

'I've had some cases where we've taken the baby at thirty-eight weeks, which is considered full term. More likely, we'd take him a little earlier. In order to know when, we'll be monitoring him closely after the procedure. We'll start with a weekly sonogram; then, if all is going well, we'll space them out. We want to watch that little lung grow.'

'Will all my babies have this?' Lily asked.

'Your boy only has CDH. If there were other abnormalities, I'd be more cautious, but with just CDH? Chances of a repeat are slim.'

Lily was numb as they headed home. Cruising the highway between states, she knitted in the backseat. It was the only thing she could do that brought comfort. Last summer seemed an eon away and the person she had been then pathetically naive.

At least now she believed her baby had a chance. She hadn't loved the radiologist, but the surgeon was nice, and if Rick said he was good, he was good. She wasn't even as frightened by the pictures. Driving down this morning, she had expected worse-even that her baby was dead. It wasn't until she saw the heart beating strongly on the screen earlier that she truly believed he was still alive.

She was the mom, which meant she had the final say on what they did for her baby. But having her parents in her corner meant a lot. Her mother had said they would deal. And so they would.

Lily accepted that her little boy had this problem and that they could fix it. The surgery was scheduled, along with tests to monitor the fetus during the next two weeks. As for weekly trips to Boston, no sweat. She could knit.

Missing school worried her a little. Now that other friends were hearing from colleges, she sometimes thought about Wesleyan and Williams, both of which she loved. Briefly, she had considered applying even if she was pregnant. Her scores were good enough. For all she knew, the schools would like having a student who was different.