"With the mildest cases of CDH, the condition remains steady," the man explained gently, "but you can see the difference three weeks has made. We use mathematical formulas to describe the degree of herniation, but I'd rather talk here in lay terms. Look at the two pictures. Look at the lungs. See how the one on the left is smaller than the one on the right in this newest shot?"
"It's teeny," Lily cried out in dismay.
"Definitely smaller, because look here, the intestines, the liver, the kidneys are crowding it out. This kind of adverse movement in three weeks suggests a momentum that will prevent lung development and eventually affect the heart. Even if this child makes it to term, he won't have the means to survive outside the womb. Some parents believe that if that happens, it was meant to be." He looked beyond Lily to Susan and Rick.
It was the moment of truth, Susan knew. If they didn't want this baby, now was the time to speak up. But the only thing she felt was that this child was part of her child, that it was already familiar to her, and that if she ever fought for anything in her life, it should be for this.
In that instant, she was fully committed. "We want this baby to live."
He smiled and looked at Lily, who nodded in agreement. "Then we operate. This kind of case excites me, because we're catching it early. Correcting the abnormality now maximizes the baby's chances."
Susan put an encouraging arm around Lily, who, sounding very mature, asked for details of the operation.
In clear terms, the doctor explained. "We make two tiny incisions, one in your belly and one in your uterus, and we insert a tiny telescope into your baby's mouth." When Lily made a sound, he squeezed her hand. "Not at all hard for the baby. Don't forget, he doesn't use that mouth for anything much yet. We put the telescope into his trachea and leave a tiny balloon behind, blown up just enough to obstruct the windpipe."
"Obstruct?" Lily asked in alarm.
The doctor smiled. "The baby doesn't need that windpipe until the moment he's born, but a funny thing happens when we block it. The lung starts to grow," he said. "As the lung grows, it pushes those wayward internal organs back out of the chest cavity and away from the heart." Again, he looked at Susan and Rick. "It's remarkable, really."
"How do you get the balloon out of his windpipe?" Lily asked, calmer again.
"Very simply. We do the beginnings of a cesarean section, lift the baby's head out of the uterus while the umbilical cord is still attached to the placenta and doing the breathing for him. Then we reach into his mouth and pull out the balloon. We cut the cord, and your son is born."
Lily was momentarily rapt. "And he'll be okay? This fixes the problem?"
"There's never a guarantee. But we've had remarkable success. Once we've blocked the windpipe, the organs grow normally. Minor surgery soon after birth closes the hole in the diaphragm."
"What does minor surgery mean?"
"Low risk. We have it down to a science."
"Will he have a scar?"
"A small one, but it'll look smaller the bigger he gets. Babies grow; scars don't."
Susan wasn't bothered by scars, if the result was survival. "Will Lily be able to carry to term?" she asked.
"I've had some cases where we've taken the baby at thirty-eight weeks, which is considered full term. More likely, we'd take him a little earlier. In order to know when, we'll be monitoring him closely after the procedure. We'll start with a weekly sonogram; then, if all is going well, we'll space them out. We want to watch that little lung grow."
"Will all my babies have this?" Lily asked.
"Your boy only has CDH. If there were other abnormalities, I'd be more cautious, but with just CDH? Chances of a repeat are slim."
Lily was numb as they headed home. Cruising the highway between states, she knitted in the backseat. It was the only thing she could do that brought comfort. Last summer seemed an eon away and the person she had been then pathetically naive.
At least now she believed her baby had a chance. She hadn't loved the radiologist, but the surgeon was nice, and if Rick said he was good, he was good. She wasn't even as frightened by the pictures. Driving down this morning, she had expected worse--even that her baby was dead. It wasn't until she saw the heart beating strongly on the screen earlier that she truly believed he was still alive.
She was the mom, which meant she had the final say on what they did for her baby. But having her parents in her corner meant a lot. Her mother had said they would deal. And so they would.
Lily accepted that her little boy had this problem and that they could fix it. The surgery was scheduled, along with tests to monitor the fetus during the next two weeks. As for weekly trips to Boston, no sweat. She could knit.
Missing school worried her a little. Now that other friends were hearing from colleges, she sometimes thought about Wesleyan and Williams, both of which she loved. Briefly, she had considered applying even if she was pregnant. Her scores were good enough. For all she knew, the schools would like having a student who was different.
But it would be too difficult, too far from home, too distant from Mary Kate and Jess. Especially now.
Percy State was definitely the way to go. But even there, if she missed too much school this spring, she might have to defer. Not that she loved being at school right now. There was constant whispering--mostly speculation about her mother's job, which, of course, wouldn't be happening if Lily wasn't pregnant.
"What're you thinking?" Susan asked, looking back between the seats.
Lily considered lying, but her mother always knew. She set down her knitting. "I'm thinking I've screwed up your life. What if People writes an awful article?"
Susan considered that. "I'll just have to turn the other cheek."
Lily had to learn to do that, too. But it was hard when she passed Zaganotes in the hall or saw Abby. And Robbie? She didn't think turning the other cheek would work with him, but she didn't know what would.
"I can't tell Robbie what happened today," she said.
"Why not? He already knows there's a problem."
"But he doesn't have to know I need surgery. Didn't the doctor say the baby would be fine?"
"Robbie can handle the truth."
"I'm not worried about Robbie. I'm worried about me. He'll ask questions, like what caused this, and, okay, maybe it wasn't field hockey. But it happened in my body."
"Hey," Rick called back. "You didn't cause this."
"Listen to your father," Susan said. "What happened isn't your fault."
"Fine." Lily didn't want to argue about whose fault it was. "But there's another thing, Mom. The more I tell Robbie, the more he'll want to be around. He's taking this all very seriously."
"As well he should," Rick put in.
"But the more involved he is, the more involved he'll be. I like Robbie's genes, but I'm not marrying him."
"How can you know that now?" Rick asked.
"Because she's smart," Susan told him. "Because she has too much else on her plate."
"But maybe he is the right guy. I'm not saying they should get married now, but why rule him out just because they're seventeen? High school sweethearts marry all the time."
"When they're old enough to know the relationship is right."
"How can they know, if they don't give the relationship a chance?"
Susan looked back at Lily. "There are relationships, and there are relationships. I'm talking about the biological one. Robbie is the baby's father. You have to keep him in the loop."
"But if they bond, he'll never leave."
"Of course he will. He's a shoo-in for acceptance at Brown. His parents will see that he goes."
Lily wasn't so sure. "He just applied to Bates. His parents don't even know. Bates is an hour away. He could be in Zaganack all the time."
"That would be good," Rick remarked.
"It would be awful," Lily argued. "He would be totally in the way."
"Of what?"
"My life. My family. My friends."
&
nbsp; Rick caught her eye in the rearview mirror. "And there isn't room for him? You liked him enough to want him as the father of your baby. Now you want him to leave town?"
"It worked for you guys."
She got them with that one. There was a brief silence.
"It did not--" Rick began, but Susan cut in.
"Our situation was different. Rick was five years older than me. He had already left town."
"But you didn't drag him back or follow him to the ends of the earth," Lily said. "I mean, you guys have been together more in the last few weeks than ever. Am I right?"
Again, a silence.
Susan looked at Rick, then back at Lily. "How does this apply to you and Robbie?"
"There are parallels," Lily insisted. "You guys don't argue. Like, I have never heard you disagree. You have your own lives, and there's a definite division of labor when it comes to parenting me. You don't get in each other's hair, and that's good."
"Maybe it isn't," Rick said.
"No, Dad. I've thought about this a lot." Her outburst before Thanksgiving still embarrassed her. "There were times when I wanted you here, but maybe that wouldn't have been the best thing. Maybe the reason you have such a great relationship with Mom is because you don't live together."
"Am I that hard to be with?" Susan asked.
"Maybe Dad is, but that's not my point. What if I include Robbie in everything just to see where the relationship will go, and then it doesn't work out? Our son will suffer. It's hard with him living right here. We'll be in each other's faces. I really think," she concluded, "that the best way is to set limits from the start. There'll be less tension."
"And less support," Rick said. "Less help."
"I have you guys. I have my friends."
"That's not the same as having the baby's dad."
"No one's asking you to marry him," Susan put in.
"But you could," Rick added. "Down the road."
"I don't need to get married," Lily put in. "Mom didn't."
"But what if you want to?" he asked.
"She's only seventeen," Susan cried.
There was another silence.
Then Rick warned, "You're giving her the wrong message, Susie."
"Me? How?"
"Marriage is not always bad. My parents were married more than forty years. Same with yours."
"They were married first, then had kids. When kids come first and force a marriage, it can be bad."
"No one's talking about force. I'm just saying that their having a child together lends itself to giving the relationship a chance. If it works out, great."
Okay, Lily thought. Let's talk about something else.
"But she's right," Susan said. "We didn't."
"Whose fault was that? I wanted to get married."
"You did not. You were just doing what you thought was the right thing."
Enough, Lily would have cried if anyone had been listening to her. But Rick was totally focused on Susan.
"How do you know that?" he asked. "How do you know I wasn't totally in love with you?"
"You have never said those words."
"Because you made it clear you didn't want to hear them. You sent me away."
"You had a job--"
"Stop!" Lily shrieked. "I'm sorry I raised it, it's no big thing--Robbie's a good guy. I don't know why I brought it up, except I don't know how to handle him, and I've never had surgery before, and my life is out of control, and it wasn't supposed to be like this!"
Susan could identify with that. Even hours later, she was shaken. She had never argued with Rick before, and while she wanted to be angry--wanted to be furious that he was contradicting her in front of Lily--she couldn't. Because she wasn't sure he was wrong.
Chapter 24
People reached mailboxes on Friday. The story was written by three correspondents, not just Melissa Randolph, so that while Susan wasn't quoted, others in town had provided enough information to fill an entire page. The good news was that the story was at the end of the issue. The bad news was that the word pact grabbed the reader first, making it hard not to want to finish the piece. Moreover--in Susan's mind, at least--pulling up the rear after the mothers of the drunk and the thief, she came across less as a besieged innocent than as a woman who was guilty as hell--and a lousy mom, to boot.
Add lousy principal to that. Or so Phil implied. He faulted her for allowing reporters into the school, and pointed out that he had been called but refused to talk. When he suggested that her ability to do her job was compromised, she listed all she had done that week. And when he again raised the idea of taking a leave, she repeated the argument she had made in November when word of Lily's pregnancy first leaked out--that her dealing firsthand with students and parents was the best way to go.
She held an emergency faculty meeting that afternoon to alert her staff, which was uniformly supportive.
Evan Brewer had a prior commitment and didn't attend.
------
Susan went to bed early that night. She was lying awake in the dark when Rick slipped in and sat beside her. He was fully dressed.
"This has taken a toll," he said softly.
"It's cumulative. I feel weak."
"Angry."
"That, too. I can't sue People, because they didn't print anything false or defamatory. I can't strangle these three girls, because I love them too much. I can't fire Phil, because he's my boss." She paused and reached for his hand. "And I can't fault you for what you said. You may be right. I may be giving Lily the wrong message. I may have given her the wrong one all along. I thought I was teaching her to be strong and self-sufficient. I thought I was teaching her responsibility--that she was in charge of her own life."
"You have. You've produced an incredibly strong, independent, responsible young woman."
"Who's afraid of being hurt, like I was," Susan admitted and waited for his reaction.
He was quiet for a time, studying their hands. "You had reason. We rely on our parents for unconditional love. Yours took theirs back. So you built a wall. I'd have done the same."
"That doesn't make it right. Walls are isolating. The thing is, we have such good friends here that we don't feel isolated."
"Maybe that's all you need," he said. Before she could respond, he stretched out on the quilt with his forehead to her cheek and her hand near his heart.
There was so much to say that she didn't know where to begin, and she was suddenly too filled with emotion to speak. So she slept.
Kate woke up at two. She might have heard one of the boys coming home from a date, but there were no footsteps on the stairs. Slipping out of bed, she checked the window. The driveway was full of parked cars, everyone in for the night.
Arms around her waist, she stared out at the dark for a bit. When she began to feel chilled, she thought of returning to Will. But other thoughts--new thoughts--had come to her mind.
Taking her robe from a hook on the back of her door, she went down to the kitchen and brewed a cup of tea. Setting the mug on the table, she settled sideways on the bench and tucked her feet under her robe.
Five minutes passed--or was it ten? The microwave clock had died six months before. But she heard footsteps in the room over her head and knew Will was coming.
"Hey," he whispered moments later. He was a big, gentle guy in a frayed T-shirt and boxer shorts. "You okay?"
"Maybe."
Will didn't normally sit on the bench, preferring the openness of a chair. But with surprising grace, he folded himself there now and tucked Kate's feet under his thighs. "Why am I guessing you're not thinking about People?"
Chin on her knees, she smiled. "I wish I was. People is irrelevant. It stays for a week, then gets thrown in the trash. It's the important stuff that stays."
"Like babies."
"Like moms and the things they say. I've said things I wish I could take back. I haven't been the best mother in the world."
He made a dismissive sound. "You're too hard on
yourself."
"Maybe. But it's how I feel. I'm not happy Mary Kate's pregnant, but I'm not about to give the baby back. I know how to roll with the punches. And Mary Kate's baby is healthy. We're very lucky." More so than Susan. Lily's situation had shaken her. It put things in a new light. "Her little guy's in rough shape."
"They'll fix him up."
"We hope."
"Heeey. Weren't we always positive when you were pregnant? Jason was breech, and they delivered him fine. The twins were a month early."
"This is different," said Kate. "Google CDH, and the picture you get is serious. If they decided on surgery, that baby has to be pretty bad. The prognosis may be good, but it's scary. What if this was Mary Kate's baby? I'd be sick." She looked around her kitchen. "We need a new microwave. The oven struggles to light, and the fridge is on its last legs. All petty. Just like me. And they're going after Susan for being a bad mom?"
A movement at the door drew her eye. Mary Kate was a waif, standing there in her nightgown. While Kate loved all her children, this one was still her baby. There was something to be said for that.
She patted the bench, and seconds later, her baby was there. "Did we wake you?"
The girl gave a quick headshake. "I keep thinking about how things go wrong. I don't know what happened, Mom. Last summer everything sounded so easy, and now all this?"
"No day at the beach."
"If I'd imagined the half of it, I might not have gone ahead."
It was a life lesson, Kate realized, but in what? Kate often acted on impulse without thinking things through. Was Mary Kate all that different?
Thinking that her own hair, loose for the night, was every bit as wild as her daughter's, she touched the small mound of Mary Kate's belly. "Still, it's my grandson in here." They had just learned it was a boy.
Mary Kate covered her hand. "A little Jacob." She teared up. Kate guessed she was missing Jacob badly--a sad life lesson there. "What if my baby has problems?"
"Your sonogram was perfect," Kate said. "We had them look closely."
"Okay, but what if he's an impossible baby?"
"We'll have to make sure he isn't."
Not My Daughter Page 25
