Patriot Games

She both hated and dreaded these, but children adapt to a changing reality far more readily than their parents.

One of these changes was her mother. The baby was really growing now. Cathy's petite frame seemed poorly suited to such abuse. After every morning shower, she looked at herself, naked, in a full-length mirror that hung on the back of the closet door and came away with an expression that was both proud and mournful as her hands traced over the daily alterations.

'It's going to get worse,' her husband told her as he emerged from the shower next.

'Thanks, Jack, I really need to hear that.'

'Can you see your feet?' he asked with a grin.

'No, but I can feel them.' They were swelling, too, along with her ankles.

'You look great to me, babe.' Jack stood behind her, reaching his arms around to hold her bulging abdomen. He rested his cheek on the top of her head. 'Love ya.'

'That's easy for you to say!' She was still looking in the mirror. Jack saw her face in the glass, a tiny smile on her lips. An invitation? He moved his hands upward to find out. 'Ouch! I'm sore.'

'Sorry.' He softened his grip to provide nothing more than support. 'Hmph. Has something changed here?'

'It took you this long to notice?' The smile broadened a tad. 'It's a shame that I have to go through this for that to happen.'

'Have you ever heard me complain? Everything about you has always been A-plus. I guess pregnancy drops you to a B-minus. But only in one subject,' he added.

'You've been teaching too long, Professor.' Her teeth were showing now. Cathy leaned back, rubbing her skin against her husband's hairy chest. For some reason she loved to do that.

'You're beautiful,' he said. 'You glow.'

'Well, I have to glow my way to work.' Jack didn't move his hands. 'I have to get dressed. Jack.'

' 'How do I love thee, let me count the ways… ' he murmured into her damp hair. 'One… two… three…'

'Not now, you lecher!'

'Why?' His hands moved very gently.

'Because I have to operate in three hours, and you have to go to spook city.' She didn't move, though. There weren't all that many moments that they could be alone.

'I'm not going there today. I got stuck with a seminar at the Academy. I'm afraid the department is a little miffed with me.' He kept looking in the minor. Her eyes were closed now. Screw the department … 'God, I love you!'

'Tonight, Jack.'

'Promise?'

'You've sold me on the idea, okay? Now I—' She reached up to grab his hands, pulled them downward, and pressed them against the taut skin of her belly.

He—the baby was definitely a he, insofar as that was what they called him—was wide awake, rolling and kicking, pushing at the dark envelope that defined his world.

'Wow,' his father observed. Cathy's hands were over his, moving them about every few seconds to follow the movements of the baby. 'What does that feel like?'

Her head leaned back a fraction. 'It feels good—except when I'm trying to sleep or when he kicks my bladder during a procedure.'

'Was Sally this—this strong?'

'I don't think so.' She didn't say that it wasn't the sort of thing you remember in terms of strength. It was just the singular feeling that your baby is alive and healthy, something that no man would ever understand. Not even Jack. Cathy Ryan was a proud woman. She knew that she was one of the best eye surgeons around. She knew that she was attractive, and worked hard to keep herself that way; even now, misshapen by her pregnancy, she knew that she was carrying it well. She could tell that from her husband's biological reaction, in the small of her back. But more than that, she knew that she was a woman, doing something that Jack could neither duplicate nor fully comprehend. Welt, she told herself, Jack does things I don't much understand either. 'I have to get dressed.'

'Okay.' Jack kissed the base of her neck. He took his time. It would have to last until this evening. 'I'm up to eleven,' he said as he stepped back.

She turned. 'Eleven what?'

'Counting the ways,' Jack laughed.

'You turkey!' She swung her bra at him. 'Only eleven?'

'It's early. My brain isn't fully functional yet.'

'I can tell it doesn't have enough of a blood supply.' The funny thing, she thought, was that Jack didn't think he was very good-looking. She liked the strong jaw, except when he forgot to shave it, and his kind, loving eyes. She looked at the scars on his shoulder, and remembered her horror as she'd watched her husband run into harm's way, then her pride in him for what he had accomplished. Cathy knew that Sally had almost died as a direct result, but there was no way Jack could have foreseen it. It was her fault, too, she knew, and Cathy promised herself that Sally would never play with her seat belt again. Each of them had paid a price for the turns their lives had taken. Sally was almost fully recovered from hers, as was she. Cathy knew it wasn't true of her husband, who'd been awake through it all while she slept.

When that happened, at least I had the blessing of unconsciousness. Jack had to live through it. He's still paying that price for it, she thought. Working two jobs now, his face always locked into a frown of concentration, worrying over something he can't talk about. She didn't know exactly what he was doing, but she was certain that it was not yet done.

The medical profession had unexpectedly given her a belief in fate. Some people simply had their time. If it was not yet that time, chance or a good surgeon would save the life in question, but if the time had come, all the skilled people in the world could not change it. Caroline Ryan, MD, knew that this was a strange way for a physician to think, and she balanced the belief with the professional certainty that she was the instrument which would thwart the force that ruled the world—but she had also chosen a field in which life-and-death was rarely the issue. Only she knew that. A close friend had gone into pediatric oncology, the treatment of children stricken with cancer. It was a field that cried out for the best people in medicine, and she'd been tempted, but she knew that the effect on her humanity would be intolerable. How could she carry a child within her while she watched other children die? How could she create life while she was unable to prevent its loss? Her belief in fate could never have made that leap of imagination, and the fear of what it might have done to her psyche had turned her to a field that was demanding in a different way. It was one thing to put your life on the line—quite another to wager your soul.

Jack, she knew, had the courage to face up to that. This, too, had its price. The anguish she occasionally saw in him could only be that kind of question. She was sure that his unspoken work at CIA was aimed at finding and killing the people who had attacked her. She felt it necessary, and she would shed no tears for those who had nearly killed her little girl, but it was a task which, as a physician, she could not herself contemplate. Clearly it wasn't easy for her man. Something had just happened a few days ago. He was struggling with whatever it was, unable to discuss it with anyone while he tried to retain the rest of his world in an undamaged state, trying to love his family while he labored… to bring others to their death? It could not have come easily to him. Her husband was a genuinely good man, in so many ways the ideal man—at least for me, she thought. He'd fallen in love with her at their first meeting, and she could recount every step of their courtship. She remembered his clumsy—in retrospect, hilarious—proposal of marriage, the terror in his eyes as she'd hesitated over the answer, as though he felt himself unworthy of her, the idiot. Most of all, she remembered the look on his face when Sally had been born. The man who had turned his back on the dog-eat-dog world of investments—the world that since the death of her mother had made her father into a driven, unhappy man—who had returned to teaching eager young minds, was now trapped in something he didn't like. But she knew that he was doing his best, and she knew just how good his best was. She'd just experienced that. Cathy wished that she could share it, as he occasionally had to share with her the depression following a failed procedure. As much as she had needed him a few painful weeks past, now he needed her. She couldn't do that—or could she?

'What's been bothering you? Can I help?'

'I can't really talk about it,' Jack said as he knotted his tie. 'It was the right thing, but not something you can feel very good about.'