Until the End of Time: A Novel

by Danielle Steel

  “Is she going to be okay?” Bill asked, choking on a sob, and the doctor hesitated just long enough to terrify him.

  “It’s not looking good,” he said honestly, not wanting to lie to him. “She’s lost a lot of blood. She would have bled out in another five minutes. We’re pretty close here. We’ll do what we can to save her. She already lost the baby.” Bill nodded. He would mourn their baby later—right now all he wanted was to save his wife.

  “Do everything you can!” Bill shouted at the doctor as he rushed off to join the team working on her. Bill sat alone in the waiting room for three hours until a nervous new father came in, waiting for his wife to deliver. He complained that he wanted to be in the delivery room with her, but a nurse told him with a disapproving look that it was not allowed. The young man tried to strike up a conversation with Bill, who was beyond talking to anyone, and five minutes later a nurse came to move Bill to a small private room, where he could wait alone for news of Jenny. The nurses had already been told that they were fighting for Jenny’s life and her condition was poor. They offered Bill a cup of tea or coffee, which he declined. He just sat there, waiting and praying in silence.

  Half an hour later, two doctors in surgical pajamas, wearing caps and masks, came to talk to him, with grim expressions.

  “Is she—” Bill looked like he was about to pass out as he met their eyes.

  “She’s alive,” they told him quickly. “Your wife had an ectopic pregnancy. It’s rare, but it happens. The fetus was developing in her fallopian tube, instead of her uterus. Sooner or later that creates a life-threatening situation for the mother. The baby must have been growing very slowly, she should have had some pain and cramping as a warning. She’s conscious now—we asked her, and she said she didn’t. Simply put, under pressure from the growing fetus, the tube explodes and creates the kind of hemorrhaging you saw tonight. The baby isn’t viable in that situation and probably never was. And nothing she did caused this. It’s an anomaly that occurs. It sounds like she’s a very active person, so maybe she missed the early signs. Many women die when an ectopic explodes, the way it did tonight. She’s very lucky. She lost the tube and the ovary on one side, but there’s no reason why she can’t get pregnant again and have a normal pregnancy with one tube and one ovary, after she recovers. She’ll have to be carefully watched to be sure it doesn’t happen again, but this kind of lightning usually doesn’t strike twice. It’s very unfortunate, I’m sorry about your baby,” the doctor speaking to him said somberly, but at least Jenny had lived through it. He admitted that it had been touch and go for a while, and the surgery had been delicate to save one side of her reproductive organs, so they didn’t leave her sterile.

  “How is she?” was all Bill could think of. Her ectopic pregnancy had been more dangerous because it had gone on longer, and she almost died.

  “She’s still groggy from the anesthetic and weak from the blood loss. We gave her three transfusions in the OR, but she’ll be shaky for a while. I’d give it a few months of rest before she gets pregnant again, but there’s no reason why she can’t conceive and deliver a healthy baby in the future. It’s just a trick of nature that happens sometimes, and unless she had severe abdominal pain, there was no way for her doctor to suspect it, and nothing she could have done except terminate the pregnancy before she wound up in a situation like the one tonight. She’s going to be fine,” the doctor reassured him again, “although of course she’s upset about the baby.” She had cried when they told her, and she wanted to see Bill, but she was still in the recovery room, so they could observe her, and he couldn’t go to her until they took her to a room. They didn’t want the hemorrhaging to start again. At this point she wouldn’t survive it, and Bill got that message loud and clear as he listened to the two doctors. He was only slightly cheered to hear that she could still have another baby. He was too worried about Jenny to care about that right now, and sad about the one they’d lost. The second doctor informed him that it had been a boy, which made it even worse. They had a real person to mourn now, a son they would never know.

  While he waited for them to bring Jenny from the recovery room, he hounded the nurses for bulletins about her. He begged them to let him go to her, and showed them his ID as a hospital chaplain at another hospital, but they still insisted that he couldn’t go to the recovery room to see her, unless he had been called to administer last rites, which fortunately he wasn’t.

  It was afternoon before Jenny was wheeled into a private room on the maternity floor and they let him see her. He had called Helene by then and told her what happened, and let Azaya know that she wasn’t coming into the office, and he called the chaplaincy service and told them that his wife was in the hospital and he wouldn’t be in for several days. Helene was devastated for them when she heard about it and worried about her daughter. She said she knew of two women who had died of ectopic pregnancies when she was younger. It had been in Pittston, and they had bled to death before anyone knew what had happened, or why. She was infinitely grateful that Bill had gotten her to help in time. He shuddered thinking what might have been if he hadn’t woken up and heard her moaning, or if she had bled out so fast, she never woke up and died beside him. It had been a very, very close call.

  He bent to kiss her the moment he saw her, and she started to cry, from the relief of seeing him, the terror of what she’d been through, and sadness over their lost baby.

  “I know, sweetheart, I know …,” he crooned to her, sitting on a chair next to her, stroking her hair, and holding tightly to her hand. “We’ll have other babies. All that matters is that you’re okay. I don’t ever, ever want to lose you. You have to get well now. And then we’ll have another baby.”

  “I want the one we just lost,” she said, sobbing. “It was a boy.”

  “I know. I promise, we’ll have others.” She nodded, clinging to him, and he put his arms around her, and she lay there and cried. And Bill was crying too, as much for the wife he loved so much as for their lost infant son.

  “I kept thinking of that family we saw in the graveyard in Maine this summer.… I don’t want us to die.… I want us to live forever. I don’t want to leave you, ever,” she said sadly, and he smiled.

  “You won’t. And you’ll never get rid of me,” he promised. “I’m in forever. So you’ll just have to get well and put up with me.” She smiled and closed her eyes, still weak from the acute blood loss, and she was having severe cramping, and pain on one side from the tube and ovary they’d removed. They gave her something for the pain a little while later, and another transfusion that night. Her blood count was still too low, and she was deathly pale. Bill sat in the chair next to her all night, and in the morning she looked better, although her eyes were sad. She told him then that she had had no warning signs, no pain from the baby growing in her tube instead of her womb. She had thought everything was fine, and so did her doctor. She had an appointment to see her that week for her three-month visit, which was irrelevant now.

  Her own doctor came to see her that morning, distressed for her about what had happened. The doctor reiterated everything the surgeons had told them and assured them both that in the best case, she would conceive again and carry the next baby to term, even with one ovary and one tube. But it had taken her two years to get pregnant, and Bill was worried that it might take even longer next time, particularly with the insane work life she led. And her doctor said that it might make things a little easier if she reduced her workload. Jenny nodded and said nothing. She was too weak to argue, and Bill knew that this wasn’t the time to discuss it.

  Jenny stayed in the hospital for five days, until her blood count improved slightly. They were still concerned about another hemorrhage and urged her to take things easy for the next two weeks, but she didn’t feel up to running around anyway. As soon as she got back to the apartment, she had Azaya bring her some work, and her assistant was shocked at the condition she found Jenny in. She was rail thin and so pale she was almost gray. And
Jenny had no choice but to tell her what had happened.

  “I’m so sorry, Jenny,” her assistant said, feeling terrible for her. “I had no idea you were pregnant.”

  “I didn’t want to tell anyone till later,” Jenny said sadly.

  But in spite of how weak she still felt and how upset about the baby, she started working from home right away, and talking to her clients on the phone. She was relieved that it had happened right after Fashion Week and not before. And she told none of her clients that she’d been sick, just that she was working from home, and none of them suspected that anything was wrong.

  She was opening their mail one morning after Azaya dropped off more work for her, and fabric samples her clients wanted her to look over. The designers had already started their research for the next season. Most of them started the day after their shows. And as she went through the stack of letters, she saw another one addressed to Bill, from the church in Wyoming. Feeling guilty, she opened it.

  They were begging him again to come. They still hadn’t hired a minister and were hoping he would reconsider and take the job. Jenny felt her heart sink as she read it. It was a very nice letter, and Bill hadn’t found a church yet, and was getting seriously discouraged that he ever would. He had even talked about going back to the law firm. He said he couldn’t stay out of work forever, and it was beginning to look like that could happen. There were just no churches that needed a minister anywhere within a reasonable radius of New York, so Jenny could continue to work.

  She put the letter on his desk, and it haunted her all day. Part of her wanted to throw it away so he wouldn’t be tempted to accept their offer, and part of her felt that she was being unfair to him, forcing him to stay in New York. But she couldn’t give up a career that had taken her fourteen years to build and that she loved. What would she do if she gave up fashion? And in Moose, Wyoming? The prospect of living in a place like that gave her chills. The church wasn’t even in Moose, it was fifteen miles out of town. The nearest big town was Jackson Hole, which was a nice place, but Wyoming just wasn’t on her map. Only New York was. She tried to forget about the letter and concentrate on her work, until she saw him reading it with a serious expression late that afternoon when he came home. He had already scolded her for doing too much work, but she was looking better every day.

  He had brought home a roast chicken, Jenny had made some vegetables, and she was trying to force herself to eat. She still had no appetite and was frighteningly thin. And she knew that if she wanted to get pregnant again in a few months, she’d have to gain weight and maybe even work less. Her doctor had stressed that to her, and Jenny knew it too. She had heard it all before, for the past two years. And having lost half of her reproductive anatomy, it might be even harder for her to get pregnant now. No one could say for sure.

  “I saw that the church in Wyoming wrote to you again. I’m sorry I opened it,” she said in a soft voice about the letter, slightly embarrassed. “I just wondered what they had to say. They still want you.” She looked worried.

  “Yes, they do,” he said simply. “That’s beside the point. I heard from that church in Brooklyn that I wrote to last week.” He looked discouraged as he said it. “They turned me down. They hired a new young minister last year. They said he waited seven years for the job.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jenny said, looking deeply sympathetic. She knew how hard he had tried to find a pastorship for the last nine months. All the positions within hundreds of miles of New York, and in commuting distance certainly, seemed to be filled, and people weren’t giving up their jobs.

  “Don’t worry about it. The right thing will come at the right time.” That was what he always said, but he was sounding less convinced. And he’d been down since they lost the baby too. Their dreams were slow in coming. And for now, no baby, no job—they were both disappointed and trying hard not to give up hope on either front.

  Bill changed the subject then and told her about the people he had seen that day at the jail. He had met with a serial killer who was awaiting trial, and was a surprisingly intelligent man, who had studied theology himself. They had had a very interesting exchange, which made the man’s situation seem even more eerie. How could someone that intelligent be a serial killer, who had killed seven women before he was caught? It was fascinating, tragic, and very strange. But at least Bill wasn’t bored.

  And the following week Jenny went back to work. With a vengeance. She saw all her clients and was trying to make up for lost time. And Bill looked worried when he saw how exhausted she was when she got home.

  “Don’t you think you’re pushing a little too much?” he said gently. She was still anemic and underweight after what had happened.

  “I’ve been stuck at home for nearly two weeks. I can’t let my clients down.” Bill nodded and said nothing. And Jenny went to see her doctor at the end of the week, who was unhappy that she had lost more weight. There was no denying that she was very, very thin, and very pale. The massive hemorrhage had taken a toll.

  “You may want to rethink your lifestyle at some point,” her doctor told her. “You’re working awfully hard. It’s difficult to get pregnant and maintain a pregnancy with those kinds of demands on your body and time. People do it, but it’s not easy. And before you get pregnant again, this may be a good time to slow down.” She had gone to the appointment alone, and she didn’t say anything to Bill when he got home. But as soon as she opened the door, she saw him hunched over a stack of letters on his desk, with the same beaten expression he had worn for months. He felt defeated by his inability to find a church, and all she wanted to do as she looked at him was take him in her arms and comfort him. She walked quietly across the room and sat down across from his desk. It was one of those defining moments in life when you throw everything you believe out the window and caution to the winds.

  “Tell them yes,” she said in a single breath, feeling like she had just boarded a roller coaster for the wildest ride of her life. She hadn’t planned it. What she had just done was totally spur of the moment.

  “Tell who yes?” He looked up in surprise, wondering if she meant his father and brothers. He had had lunch with Tom that week and had a serious discussion with him about going back to the firm. He didn’t know what else to do. He didn’t want to be out of work for years. “My father?”

  “Of course not.” She looked incensed at the idea. She would let him do anything but that. They would eat him alive. “The people in Wyoming. I think we’ve got to do it. You’re not going to find anything here, and they’ve been begging you for months.” There was even a small cozy house for them near the church. Bill stared at her as though she had lost her mind, and for a minute she felt like she had. The words had come out of her mouth before she had time to measure them or even think about it. But she knew in her gut it was right.

  “Are you serious? But what about you?” Suddenly he looked panicked, wondering if she was leaving him. “Would you come with me?”

  “Are you crazy? Of course. What would I do here without you?”

  “Work in fashion, maybe,” he teased her with a slow smile.

  She sighed as she looked at him. “I love my job, and the work I do. But you’re my whole life.” She had realized it more than ever when she almost died. His brother Tom had been horrified when Bill told him about it. They had never accepted Jenny as a suitable spouse for him, but no one wanted her to die. Tom felt sorry for them both, and was glad that she’d survived. He knew how much Bill loved her and how devastated he would have been if she hadn’t.

  “You can’t just move to Wyoming, Jenny. That’s not fair to you. I won’t let you do that. You’ve invested fourteen years in your career. You can’t just throw that away.”

  “Maybe I could take a year off, while you see how it goes, and we decide if we like it there.” They both knew she’d probably lose some clients and some momentum in her business. Most of her clients wanted more attention than she could give them from a distance. But others wou
ld come back to her if she returned. “It’s worth a try. What have we got to lose? And it might be a better place to be pregnant and have a baby than running my ass off here. Maybe we just have to do this, and take our chances on Moose, Wyoming.” Her eyes filled with tears as she said it, but she was smiling. It was a huge sacrifice for her to make, but she loved him and she felt as though she owed it to him. He had tried valiantly to do the right thing for her. Now she felt like it was her turn. And she wanted to do this for him.

  “I want you to think about this,” he said sternly, “before I say anything to them. You can claim insanity for what you just said to me, and I won’t hold you to it. Maybe you just had a bad day.” She laughed and put her arms around his neck.

  “I have a great husband. That’s more important than any bad day. I want you to be happy, and have a shot at the life you want. And who knows, maybe we’ll love it.” She couldn’t imagine it, but she was willing to try. For him. It was the greatest gesture of love she had ever made in her life, and he was deeply cognizant of it. But he didn’t want to ruin her life and career in the process.

  “Just think about it, Jen. We don’t have to rush into this. Take your time. And it’s okay if you change your mind and decide you want to stay.”

  She kissed him again, and Jenny told her mother about it the next day. Helene sounded instantly worried. It sounded all too familiar to her.

  “That’s how I felt when I agreed to go to Pittston with your father. I thought I was doing the right thing for him. And when we got there, it was so much worse than I’d imagined. If he had lived, we would have had a horrible, horrible life. We did for the three years we were there until he died. I felt like I was buried alive.” And she couldn’t imagine her daughter in Moose, Wyoming. She had been part of a sophisticated scene in New York, in the fashion industry, for fourteen years, including her three years at Parsons. What could she possibly do in Moose, other than cry?