how stupid he felt sitting here just
Who knew that meditating would be so difficult? Sitting here and doing nothing was harder than anything Jay had ever done, or in his case,
In the back of his mind, nagging at him, was something about work, some little thing flitting up and around like a moth, something he couldn’t quite pin down. Something about the drug thing, and the DEA and NSA agents Lee and George…
No. Push it away. Get back to that later. For now, just
Lee and George. Not much to know about them. Close to the same age, both career men, both lived in the District. Both of them married briefly but divorced, no live-in girlfriends at the moment. A lot alike…
Oh, yeah. Right. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in…
Lee’s ex-wife was originally from Florida, now a lawyer in Atlanta who also taught law at a local college. She and Lee had met in law school. Jay had checked her out, and while she was well-regarded as a teacher, she was also considered something of a radical. She was a member of the Lesbian Teacher Association or some such, big on women’s rights. A no-fault divorce, no hard feelings, at least not in any official records or interviews. Still, that must have made Lee feel weird. You get a divorce, your ex-wife switches her sexual preferences to the other side of the street. Might tend to make you doubt your masculinity a little.
George’s ex was a stockbroker. A law-school graduate who didn’t practice but who worked for one of the big trading companies on Wall Street, did well enough that she had a two-million-dollar condo overlooking Central Park, single, no significant boyfriends five years after the divorce, didn’t seem to date much, according to what Jay had uncovered about her. Like Lee with his ex-wife, George apparently got along famously with his ex.
We’re all very civilized here…
Kind of made you wonder, though, how a woman who was rich enough to afford a condo that expensive didn’t have guys lined up waiting for her favor. Good-looking woman, hair cut short, built like a dancer.
Well, it didn’t really matter, did it?
Breathe out, breathe in, breathe out…
The next thought that swung down from the monkey tree and chittered at Jay so startled him that his eyes popped open, and he said, “Oh, shit!”
Sitting
“No, no, I just had a thought—”
“Don’t worry, it’s part of the process—”
“No, I mean, an idea. About the dope case!”
“Let it wait, it will keep.”
“No, it won’t. I have to get to my computer
“Jay, this is not how to meditate.”
“I know, I know, but I have to check this out.”
Saji sighed. “Fine. Do what you have to do.” She closed her eyes and went back to her sitting. Jay was already up and hurrying from the bedroom to his terminal.
Michaels took the day off to be with Toni. She was still in bed, sleeping hard, and he planned to let her sleep as long as possible. The spotting the day before wasn’t a sign of fetal distress, the doctor had told them, but it had caused Michaels more than a little dry mouth and nervousness. By the time he had gotten to the clinic, Toni had already been examined, was getting some blood tests, and the doctor had pulled him aside to talk to him.
The doctor, a tall, very dark, and spindly gray-haired man of sixty or so with the unlikely name of Florid, was blunt: “Listen, Mr. Michaels, if your wife doesn’t sit down and prop her feet up and do a lot of nothing for the next four months, there is a chance she is going to have a preterm birth and lose this baby.”
“Jesus. Have you told her this?”
“I have. She’s still relatively young and healthy, and the baby seems fine, but her blood pressure is up a little. Normally she’s one twenty over seventy-four, but today she’s at one thirty over eighty-six. That’s not technically considered high, but we always watch that, especially in a primagravida… that’s a first-time pregnancy.”
“Why is that?”
“There is a condition called preeclampsia that happens in around five pregnancies out of a hundred. Usually it’s mild, and by itself it usually doesn’t cause problems, but sometimes it can cause what is known as
“Worse, sometimes preeclampsia can progress to full eclampsia, which, while very rare, involves seizures, coma, and sometimes, a fatal event.”
Michaels swallowed. Now his mouth was
“Is this what’s happening to Toni?”
“Probably not. There isn’t any albumen in her urine, and she doesn’t have much edema, and usually you get those with the rise in BP, but better safe than sorry.”
“Toni is the toughest, strongest, healthiest woman I know.”
Dr. Florid smiled. “Yes, I expect she can bend steel in her bare hands. Normally, pregnancy is not a medical problem, women can go about their business and do everything they were doing before they got pregnant. Most women. But interior plumbing isn’t the same as voluntary muscles. No matter how strong-willed you might be, you can’t toughen up the inside of a uterus. Toni’s is fragile; likely she was born that way. Now, she could go on to deliver this baby without any more problems, but I’d be a lot happier and that would be a lot more likely if she took it easy. You need to impress on her how important it is for her to relax. After the baby comes, and assuming she has time, she can go swing on a vine like Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, and kick the crap out of lions and rhinos for all I care, but for now,
Michaels nodded. “I understand.”
“If we have another epsisode of second-trimester bleeding, I am going to confine her to bed for the duration. I know she won’t like that.”
Michaels had to grin. “No, sir, that’s for sure.”
He had another question, started to speak, but decided that maybe it was selfish to ask it.
The doctor read his mind: “Sex is permissible, assuming you don’t like to pretend she’s a trampoline while you do it.”
Michaels flushed, embarrassed.
The doctor laughed. “Listen, I know this all sounds very dramatic and scary, but you need to remember that in medicine, we have to plan for the worst-case scenario. Chances are very good that nothing bad will happen to your wife or your unborn son. But we have to let you know the possibilites, no matter how small. We have to cover all the bases.”
“So you don’t get sued,” Michaels said.
“Hell, son, I could give my patients and their families movies, recordings, documents, a degree in medicine, and get ’em to sign a paper saying they understood them all and would never even talk to a lawyer in church, and we’d
“Must be awful.”
“Catching babies makes up for it. The look on the new mama’s face when she sees her child for the first time
