She woke with rumbling bowels. She walked around her bedroom between bouts in the bathroom, cursing her nerves and fighting tears at the growing certainty that she’d be unable to run that morning.
It was seven o’clock. How would she be ready to face the Jersey Shore Women’s Association at nine? And it was so hot. She stopped in front of the full-length mirror on her closet door. The long, well-defined muscles of her thighs comforted her. Her face was so pale, though. She hated to see it first thing in the morning. And her hair. It was impossibly frizzed from the ocean air. She ran her fingers through the stubborn curls.
What the hell did Cole want with her anyway?
She felt toyed with. Oh, it wasn’t intentional. He didn’t mean to tease her. Estelle had been out of town, and maybe at that moment he sincerely thought he wanted her. But for what? To satisfy some immediate craving, when for her the longing would go on and on.
That he regretted asking her was certain. On the beach after Sunday’s brunch, he’d made it very clear. They’d sat at the water’s edge, on opposite sides of a patch of shells and seaweed, while he begged her to forget it and she promised him she would. But the memory of his face the night he’d asked her, the hunger she’d seen in his eyes, would stay with her for a long time.
When they had finished talking, when they understood each other as well as they could, she impulsively began complaining about Estelle as if she were trying to undo the fragile peace treaty they’d created between them.
“She treats me badly behind your back,” she said.
He looked unimpressed.
“She says cruel things to me.”
“Like what?”
She hesitated. What could she say without humiliating herself? Estelle insulted her body, her hair, the way she talked. She told her that Cole made jokes about the sounds coming from her bedroom when she was with Sandy. She couldn’t tell him she knew about that.
“She once told me that I was only capable of getting a man who would see me on a part-time basis.” She felt as if she were ten years old, tattling on a schoolmate.
“But that’s all you want,” he said.
“That’s not the point, Cole. The point is that she said it, and it was insulting.”
“Estelle’s not famous for her diplomacy, but I thought your skin was a little thicker than that.”
“She says other things. Nastier things. Too embarrassing to repeat.”
“What do you want me to do about it?”
She really wasn’t sure. “I just want you to know what she’s like.”
His face went cold. “I think I know her a little better than you do, thank you.” He stood up and walked toward the house.
“Cole!” She stood up herself and he turned around. “Please don’t be angry with me.” Her throat was tight.
“I’m not angry. I’m just sick of people telling me what’s wrong with Estelle. I thought it would be different with you.”
He turned, and this time she let him go.
She didn’t have time now to stew about Cole, though. She got into the shower and turned on a cool spray of water. Her legs still ached from the day before, when she’d run like some kind of animal over the clean white dunes at Island Beach. Sandy had perched himself on the top of a dune, brazenly smoking a joint while he waited for her. She’d felt a little crazed, running in bare feet through the sand and sea grass with the sunbathers as an audience.
When she’d finished, she leaned against Sandy while he told her everything imaginable about beach grass and the shifting sand. He knew the name of every bird, and he pointed out the osprey nests scattered among the tops of the trees. She listened, too exhilarated to talk herself.
That night in bed she cried with the sharp pains in her calves and thighs, and Sandy rubbed them with oil, making long expert strokes with his thumbs. Then he smoothed the oil over the rest of her, telling her in a voice laced with honey that he would take the pain away. And for a while, he did.
There were many more of them than she’d anticipated. They eyed her as they took their seats in the crowded meeting room at the Y, jangling their bracelets and patting beauty parlor hair. Kit kept a frozen smile on her face as she nursed her coffee at the podium. There had to be a hundred women here. At nine in the morning. This was a hot topic.
They’d given her a microphone, and her voice sounded stilted to her ears when she began to speak, but soon the words were flowing easily. She turned her notecards upside down. She knew this so well. The history of fetal surgery. The specifics of how the center at Blair would function. Cole’s reputation. She even mentioned Estelle, how with her help they had access to international developments in the field.
Then she showed the slides Cole had given her. Tasteful shots of children who could have been helped by surgery before they were born. Oohs and aahs went up from her audience. Most of the babies looked healthy, but she described the abnormalities hidden inside that could cripple or kill them. One picture showed a baby with a swollen, fluid-filled head and the women gasped. She was glad that she’d vetoed the slides of the babies who were born dead.
“But this is what it’s all about.” Cole had looked distressed.
“I know, but you’ll have these women throwing up their Danishes,” she’d answered.
When she finished with the last slide, the lights went up and she invited questions. At first they were easy, full of examples of children they knew who suffered from conditions that might have responded to surgery in utero.
But then it got harder.
A tall, graying woman in the middle of the room stood up. “I think there comes a point when the continued development of technology is dangerous.” She paused, a self-serving smile on her lips, and the room was silent. “Dangerous in a moral sense. What gives us the right to tamper with something that is God’s will?”
“You had surgery for your gallstones last winter, Hallie!”
Kit was grateful to that brave soul in the rear of the room, whoever she was.
“That was different,” Hallie continued. “I’m an adult. These are unborn children who God in His divine wisdom has planned for in His own way.”
Kit was glad now that she had the microphone. When she spoke, her voice easily overrode Hallie’s. “It’s certainly true that there are differing schools of thought on the topic of fetal surgery,” she said. “But it’s a fact that the technology exists to help these children live fuller lives and in some cases, to live period. The parents whose children have been helped by these advances are certainly very grateful for them.”
A woman near Hallie stood up. “What about those babies who are spared death through surgery only to be left so severely crippled that they become a drain on the family? I think all of us would agree that sometimes it’s better to die than to live a fraction of a life and burden those around us.”
Did she have to sound so eloquent?
“You raise an important issue,” Kit said. “It’s very difficult to decide who should be treated and who shouldn’t, and many variables need to be considered. At Blair we will have an ethics committee made up of a minister”—she looked at Hallie—“a neonatologist—that is, a medical doctor specializing in newborn infants—and several professionals and parents from the community. Every case that is to be considered for treatment will be discussed by this committee in order to make the best decision possible with the healthiest outcome for the child and his or her family. Yes?”
“I read about twins where one was saved at the expense of the other.”
“I think you’re referring to the recent case in which one twin was diagnosed as having a fatal condition. The parents wanted to abort that fetus but spare the second fetus, which was healthy. The fetal surgeons were able to withdraw blood from the sick fetus while it was in the uterus, and the mother continued her pregnancy and delivered the healthy second twin.”
There were some gasps in the audience as she related the story, and she wondered if there might have been a better way to tell it.
“Those doctors didn’t perform any miracle there,” said Hallie. “They performed murder.”
Several heads bobbed up and down in agreement and Kit’s palms went damp.
“I can see why you might think that,” she said carefully. “However, the surgery was the parents’ choice and their legal right. Different parents make different choices, and what is right for me might not be right for you”—she nodded at Hallie—“or for you.” She nodded at a woman in the front row. “Through fetal surgery we’re increasing the available choices for those parents and their children.”
She wasn’t certain if her last few sentences had made any sense. She just wanted to get out of there.
She set the air conditioner of her car so that it blew right in her face and took long slow breaths of the cool air. This was supposed to have been an easy group. She had to stay in better control of her audience. She’d done okay at first, until the case of those twins sprang out of nowhere. She’d panicked. She couldn’t afford to freeze up like that. Maybe she was the wrong person for this job.