Ellie stared at the console of the landline on her desk at Channel 11, gazing at the speaker mesh as if she could see through its layer of tiny holes and to the face beyond.
“Can you hear me?” she asked.
Her uneaten lunch sat on a crinkly piece of waxed paper on her blotter. The guy downstairs in the newsroom caf had given her a tuna sandwich instead of the turkey she’d ordered. She hated tuna. On the other end of this call, in an apartment somewhere in Massachusetts, Meg sat with the woman who was about to reveal her devastating medical outcome. In the hideous equation of journalism, this woman’s tragedy could seal Ellie’s success.
“We can hear you.” Meg’s voice, scratchy and muffled, came over the speaker. “I’m here with Abigail, as we discussed, and she’s fine. You’re fine, aren’t you, Abigail?”
Someone said something in the background, and though Ellie strained to hear, she couldn’t. She stood, closed the door to her office, sat back down. An anonymous interview was not the preferred way to get a story, but at this point, she’d take what she could get. And if it didn’t pan out, so what? One step at a time, until the story was ready.
After Ellie found the note on her door the night before, she’d been forced to admit that Meg might be an asset. Being annoying didn’t mean she was incompetent, and Ellie could not pull off this story alone. She’d knocked on Meg’s door—and Meg had slipped out into the hallway, clicking the door closed behind her.
“My place is a mess,” Meg had explained. She pushed up the sleeves of her pink sweatshirt, worn inside out over fraying jeans. “Everything’s still in boxes. So embarrassing. I guess you got my note?”
“Great work,” Ellie told her. She wasn’t eager to invite Meg into her place again, didn’t want to set a precedent. So the two women stayed in the hall, the elevator rumbling from time to time, and fake candles in sconces flickering on the walls behind them. “Listen, how’d you find this person? And you think she’ll talk?”
Meg nodded. “I do. She’s…” She scratched under her chin, seemed to be searching for a word. “I don’t know how to describe it. Damaged. She’s decided her life was ruined by this medicine. By Pharminex. When I told her what you said, about the company calculating how much a human life is worth, she about lost it. I almost regret that she knows it. As if her psyche wasn’t damaged enough—not to mention her future—now she feels like it was on purpose. Premeditated. That they knew what might happen and didn’t do anything about it. She’s really out to get them.”
“I completely understand.” Ellie thought about that. “Well, I can imagine, I mean, how that might feel.”
“Maybe.”
Ellie wondered what she meant by that skeptical-sounding maybe, but it didn’t matter. “How’d you find her?”
“Don’t tell, okay? Social media private group. I pretended I was a victim too.”
“Pretended?”
“Well, I had to. I couldn’t say—hey, just curious, anyone get their childbearing capability ruined by a dangerous drug? Wanna chat? So I looked up an infertility support group, and, you know, told them I’d been given—well, the whole thing. And they let me in.”
Ellie leaned back against the wallpaper, a strip of mahogany-painted molding pressing into her back. She hadn’t lost her moral compass, even though she sometimes ignored it. Pretending to be a victim? Another in the sometimes necessary deceptions of the job. It always seemed like particularly bad karma, pretending to share a tragedy, faking empathy and a shared devastation. Almost like daring it to happen in real life. But, said the journalist’s trusty rationalization for deceit, it was all for the greater good.
“Meg? You only learned about this project this week, and you already convinced a person to talk to a reporter? Usually that kind of negotiating and persuasion takes much longer.”
Meg smiled, modest. “What can I say? Just doing my job. Sometimes things work.”
“We’ll have to figure out how to broach this with Warren, though,” Ellie had told her. “He specifically instructed us, no pretending. So we need to come up with an acceptable explanation of how you found her.”
“You and me, sister,” Meg had said. “We’re in this together now.”
That late-night partnership agreement hadn’t made Ellie exactly comfortable, but simply interviewing someone didn’t mean she’d have to put the results on the air.
Now Abigail was ready to talk. Meg had said she’d set up a second cell phone, mounted on a little tripod, to record their interview. As they’d discussed, she’d position Abigail in front of a window, so their subject appeared only in silhouette.
“Ready?” Ellie asked.
By the time the interview was over, Ellie sat at her desk, spent and hollow, head in her hands, cheeks wet with tears. Television was about storytelling, information, changing the world. But hearing a personal story like Abigail’s—the sorrow in her voice, and the unfiltered longing—reminded Ellie that each of her stories were about real human beings, with tender hopes and fears and desires, with bitter disappointments and unfulfilled dreams. And sometimes, with the festering damage that accrued from loss. The pain that could sharpen into a weapon.
“I hate those people.” Abigail’s voice had hardened after relating her pivotal consultation in the doctor’s office, the moment her doctor had divulged the truth about her “adverse reaction” to the drug, the reality it meant, the emotional paralysis that followed. “I felt betrayed,” Abigail said. “They’d promised me a child, a miracle, my future, my happiness. Now when I even see a child…”
Abigail had stopped, leaving silence in the space between them. Then Ellie heard soft sobs through the speakers. She imagined Meg comforting the woman. Wondered if she’d turned off the recording while she did so.
“I’m so sorry.” Ellie felt guilty, guilty she had lured the woman into this agony of memory. “I know it’s difficult. Do you want to take a break?”
“No, no, I want to say this. I want to. They—he—they—it made me feel as if…” Abigail went silent, leaving only the brown hum of the transmission. “As if I had killed my children. As if they had tricked me into murdering my own children.”
“Oh, no, Abigail.” She needed to reassure this woman, though that wasn’t her role, but how could anyone not be sympathetic? “Please don’t think that!”
“It is what she thinks.” Meg’s voice bit through the speakers. “Don’t belittle that.”
“I was only trying to…” Ellie, off balance, tried to maintain her composure. She needed to prevent Abigail from hanging up. “Forgive me, Abigail.”
“It’s okay.” Abigail’s voice came out a whisper.
“Hold on a minute,” Meg said. “I’m gonna turn off the video. I’ll leave the sound so you can stay connected.”
For this moment at least, Ellie was relieved they weren’t face-to-face. The smell of the tuna sandwich now turned her stomach. With three quick motions, she rewrapped it in the waxed paper, put it in the wastebasket and stuffed the morning newspaper on top of it. On the other end of the line, Ellie heard someone sneeze, then footsteps, a hiss, maybe the pull tab of a can of soda.
“Ellie? We’re back. Abigail’s fine.”
“You sure?” Ellie had to ask.
More unintelligible conversation on the other end. Ellie covered her face for a beat, frustrated. But an interview like this was only one step on the journey. It was only what it would turn out to be, not what it seemed right now.
“Abigail wants to ask you something.” Meg’s voice came though clearly. “She wants to know if you’ve ever had children.”
Ellie flinched, startled by the personal question. Realizing the irony, she almost laughed. This conversation was already as personal as it could get. Easier to be the one asking questions than the one answering. The double standard of journalism.
“Um, no, no kids,” Ellie said.
“Any siblings? And any who had kids?” Meg went on, seemed to be forwarding Abigail’s questions.
“Well, no, in fact.” Why’d she want to know this? But maybe Abigail was testing whether Ellie could give as good as she took. Ellie wondered if she offered something deeply personal, it would reassure Abigail that her motives were pure. An emotional exchange. An agreement to be honest. “I’m not close with my family.”
“Oh my gosh, since when?” Meg’s voice had changed, the pitch now higher, no longer the neutral interviewer.
Ellie frowned, changed her tone to shut Meg down. It wasn’t Meg she was trying to win over. “Some years ago,” she said. She usually tried to avoid going to that empty black spot in the universe.
“So, unless you have a child, your immediate family dies out?” Meg asked. “Abigail is asking.”
Abigail is kind of a crazy person, Ellie thought. “I suppose,” she said out loud.
“Your parents are still alive? She wants to know.”
You’ve gone too far, Abigail, Ellie thought. “They are. So now—”
“And it would make them happy, Abigail’s saying, if you had a child? Since there’s still time for you, Ellie, right?”
And we’re done here. Ellie’s sympathy—honest sympathy—had curdled into wary irritation. “I suppose,” she said. “So Meg, is Abigail ready? Are we okay to continue the interview?” She tried to paper over the transition. “I know this must be difficult for you.”
Silence on the other end.
“Are we still connected?” Ellie half regretted her brusque response and hoped she hadn’t blown it. “Everything okay?”
She heard someone clear her throat. Then more murmurs.
“Okay,” Meg said. “Just checking the recording. I’m flipping on my video again. Okay. Go ahead.”
“Here’s a different kind of question.” Ellie was relieved they were back on topic. “How do you deal, now, with what happened?”
It was a key part of the story, the physical—and psychological—backlash from such a devastating loss. A loss not only of a child, but of trust.
After a few beats of silence, Meg answered. “Abigail says she’s done talking. She told you what happened. That’s all you need to know.”
“It’s just that—”
But all she heard was a dial tone.