TWELVE

Kate and Joshua were set to fly to the United States on Monday, May 20, and by the evening of Sunday the nineteenth, she was sure that they would never be allowed out of the country.

UNICEF, the co-sponsor, along with the CDC International Relief Fund, of her six weeks of medical aid in Romania, had sent the PanAm ticket weeks ago, and since Otopeni Airport did not allow telephone confirmations of flights, she called the Office of National Tourism almost hourly to confirm her reservations. Not satisfied with that, she had Lucian drive out to the airport twice on Saturday and three times on Sunday to confirm that the flight was still scheduled and that she had a seat reserved. Joshua would fly in her arms and needed no separate ticket. She also had Lucian confirm this.

Mr. Stancu at the Ministry had been as good as his word—he was a short, red-cheeked, cheerful man, the exact opposite of the stereotype of an Eastern European bureaucrat as well as the opposite of all the other bureaucrats Kate had met in the country— and confirmed that Joshua’s exit visa was complete and cleared. They had waived the usual requirement for the signature of one of the birth parents. The Romanian end of the adoption process was amazingly simple.

The American Embassy was slower, but by Saturday afternoon Mr. Crawley had expedited Joshua’s exit visa … Lucian had brought a Nikon to the hospital to shoot the infant’s photo, but it turned out that no photo was necessary … and the U.S. part of the adoption was begun through their liaison with Rocky Mountain Adoption Option Services. Their American headquarters was Denver, so Kate had no problems in completing the process once she got home.

Mr. Popescu, the chief administrator of District Hospital One, was at first displeased that their fiery American visitor was taking one of the children out of their wards—especially without paying him for the privilege—but phone calls from the Ministry of Health and reassurances from the Romanian pediatricians that the child had almost no chance of survival and was a drain on hospital resources evidently reassured the little man to the point he merely smirked at Kate during her last day on the job.

All paperwork was in place. Pan American had been notified that a very sick child was being transported to the States and had extra medical equipment standing by in Frankfurt. Kate was bringing her own medical bag aboard the aircraft, replenished as it was by Red Cross supplies and even bootlegged syringes, i.v.-drips, and antibiotics somehow scrounged by Lucian from the medical school. The syringes were the Western disposable type, still in their sterile pacs. The antibiotics were from West Germany. Kate was deeply touched, knowing how much money such contraband would have brought on the black market.

And while a part of her mind thought that these supplies should stay in Romania to help a few of the thousands of children in hospitals there, a greater part of her mind and heart knew that she would do anything, steal anything, deny anyone anything in order to keep Joshua alive. It was a shock to Kate after almost two decades of service to medical ethics to realize that there were higher imperatives.

She had been trying to call Tom, her ex-husband, since Thursday, but his answering machine in Boulder had rattled off an announcement in his deep, happy, little-boy voice that he was off leading a rafting trip down the Arkansas River and would be back when he got back. Leave a message if you’re so inclined. Kate left four messages, each one a bit more coherent than the last.

Her breakup with Tom six years earlier had been quiet rather than melodramatic, resigned rather than angry. As is true of that one percent or so of marriages, she and her ex-husband became closer friends after the divorce and often had meals or drinks together after work. Tom, just turned forty but as strong as a proverbial ox and handsome in a Tom Sawyerish sort of way, could finally acknowledge that it was true—he had never grown up. His Boulder-based job as river guide, part-time mountaineer, part-time bicycle racer, part-time Himalayan trekking guide, part-time nature photographer, and full-time adventure-seeker had given him—he now admitted—the perfect excuse not to grow up.

As for Kate, she had been able to admit to him in recent months that perhaps she had grown up too much, that her adult-adult medical persona had pushed out whatever childlike fun she had shared with him in the early days. There was no talk of a reconciliation between them—Kate was sure that neither could imagine living together again—but their conversation had become more relaxed in recent years, their sharing of small problems and large confidences less constrained.

And now Kate was bringing home a baby. After reassuring each other for years, each for his or her own reasons, that neither wanted a child in their lives, Dr. Kate Neuman, at age thirty-eight, was bringing home a baby.

Tom caught her at her Strada Ştirbei Vodă apartment on Sunday evening. His raft trip had been a success. He could not believe her message. His voice was the usual blend of boyish energy and Boulderish enthusiasm. It made Kate want to cry.

“I’m scared it won’t happen,” she said. The connection was terrible, suffering from all the echoes, delays, and hollownesses common to most transatlantic calls, with the added fuzz, rasp, clunk, and echoes of Romanian telephonic service.

Still, Tom heard her. “What do you mean it’s not going to happen? Didn’t you say that you had all the paperwork licked? The baby … Joshua … didn’t you say he’s OK right now?”

“He’s stable, yes.”

“Then what…”

“I don’t know,” said Kate. She realized that if it was seven o’clock on Sunday evening where she was … the rich May light lay heavy on the chestnut tree outside her apartment window … then it must be ten o’clock Sunday morning in Boulder. She took a breath. “I just have this terrible fear that it’s not going to happen. That something’s going to … stop us.”

Tom’s voice was as serious as she ever remembered hearing it. “This isn’t like you, Kat. What happened to the Iron Lady I used to know and love? The woman who was going to cure the world, whether it wanted to be cured or not?” The gentleness of his tone belied the words.

Kate winced at the “Kat.” It had been the name he called her during their lovemaking early in their marriage. “It’s this place,” she said. “It makes you paranoid. Somebody told me that every third or fourth person was a paid informer during the Ceauşescu years.” The phone clunked and whistled. Distance hummed in the wires. “Which reminds me,” she said, “we shouldn’t be talking on the phone.”

“Eavesdroppers? Wiretappers? KGB or whatever the Romanian equivalent is?” came Tom’s voice through the static. “Fuck ’em. Fuck you, whoever’s listening. Not you, Kat.”

“Not Securitate,” said Kate, trying to smile. “The phone bill.”

“Well, fuck AT&T too. Or MCI. Or whoever the hell I signed up with.”

Kate did smile. She always had to pay the bills when they were married; Tom had rarely known whom they were paying for what. She wondered who was paying his bills now.

“When do you get into Stapleton tomorrow?” asked Tom. His voice was barely audible over the line noise.

Kate closed her eyes and recited her itinerary. “Out of Bucharest on PanAm Ten-seventy to Frankfurt via Warsaw at seven-ten A.M. PanAm Flight Sixty-seven out of Frankfurt at ten-thirty in the morning, arriving JFK at one-oh-five P.M. Then PanAm Five Ninety-seven out of JFK, arriving Denver at seven fifty-eight P.M.”

“Wow,” said Tom. “Hell of a day for the kid. The mother too.” There was a moment of silence except for line noise. “I’ll be down at Stapleton to pick you up, Kate.”

“There’s no need…”

“I’ll be there.”

Kate did not argue further. “Thank you, Tom,” she said. “Oh … and bring a car seat.”

“A what?”

“An infant-carrier car seat.”

There was the muted sound of laughter and then cursing. “Great,” said Tom at last. “I get to spend my day off hunting for a freaking baby’s car seat. You got it, Kat. Love you, kid. See you tomorrow night.” He hung up with the abruptness that used to take Kate by surprise.

The sudden silence after the conversation was difficult. Kate paced her room a hundredth time, checked her luggage—all packed except for her pajamas and toilet kit—for the fiftieth time, and went through the papers in her Banana Republic safari jacket for the five hundredth time: passport, her visa, Joshua’s visa, adoption papers—stamped by the Ministry and the U.S. Embassy—record of inoculation, record of testing for contagious diseases, a letter of request for expedited treatment from Mr. Stancu’s office and a similar letter from Mr. Crawley at the American Embassy. Everything there. Everything stamped, counterstamped, approved, sealed, and completed.

Something was going to go wrong. She knew it. Every footstep in the hallway or the apartment courtyard was some official with the word—Joshua had died in the hour since she had seen him, sleeping peacefully in his hospital crib. Or the Ministry had revoked its permission. Or …

Something would go wrong.

Lucian had offered to drive her to the airport and she had accepted. Father O’Rourke had business Monday morning in Tîrgovişte, fifty miles north of the capital, but he had insisted on coming by the hospital at six when she was scheduled to pick Joshua up. Everything was timed, arranged, and packaged … she had even had Lucian help her figure out schedules on the Orient Express to Budapest in case PanAm and Tarom Airlines suddenly quit serving Bucharest … but Kate was sure something was going to go wrong.

At ten P.M., Kate got into her pajamas, brushed her teeth, set her alarm clock for 4:45, and got into bed, knowing that she would not sleep. She stared at the ceiling, thought of Joshua sleeping on his stomach or lying on his back, the i.v. still attached to give him that final strength for tomorrow’s ordeal, and Kate began the vigil of the long night of waiting.