The Dark Side

by Danielle Steel

  “They give her an anesthetic to do it? That sounds like a big deal to me. I don’t like the idea of them putting her out.”

  “You’d rather have her screaming in pain from an ear infection every few weeks?” She made it sound like those were the only two options, but Austin wasn’t convinced.

  “What does Cathy think? Did she suggest it?”

  “She said she’s going to be sick almost constantly for the first two years of school.”

  “You told me that. What does she think of surgically implanting ear tubes?”

  “Lots of kids have them,” Zoe said blithely. “She thinks it’s a good idea.” It was a bold-faced lie and Zoe knew it, she thought the end justified the means. And the end in this case was a good one. She hadn’t mentioned it to Cathy, because she didn’t want to argue with her, in case she thought it unnecessary or premature. But Zoe didn’t want to wait for another ear infection to do it. Why let Jaime go through all that pain again if it could be prevented? With Cathy’s alleged endorsement, Austin agreed. He trusted her medically a hundred percent, even more than he trusted Zoe or himself. She had far more experience than they did, and he liked how cautious and conservative she was. She didn’t rush into anything, overprescribe medication, or do anything they didn’t have to do. So if she thought the ear tubes made sense, he wasn’t enthusiastic about it because of the anesthesia, but he reluctantly agreed.

  “I don’t think any of my nephews had them,” Austin said pensively as they cleared away the dishes.

  “Maybe they don’t get ear infections,” she said lightly.

  “That’s true. I never asked.”

  “And with the high fevers she’d run with an ear infection, we have the risk of another febrile seizure in her case,” Zoe reminded him.

  “She’s never had one again,” he said staunchly.

  “I think we’re doing the right thing,” she said seriously.

  “When do they want to do it?” He still looked unhappy about it. He believed in natural solutions whenever possible, particularly for such a young child, not surgery.

  “Two weeks from today. We’ll be in and out in an hour.” He nodded and left the room, still digesting what they were planning to do.

  He asked his brother about it the following week. He said that one of his boys had had them too. “The poor kid had constant ear infections, and he wanted to be on the swim team, which made them worse. The only way he could swim on the team was if he got the tubes inserted, with plugs in his case. They work well for him, he still has them. It’s not a big deal.” After that, Austin was reassured. He had been unnerved by the way Zoe had sprung the plan on him as a fait accompli, and making him feel like a bad father if he wouldn’t agree. But if his nephew had them, they must be okay. He had gotten them at six and was now twelve. But Jaime was only three, still a baby to him, and had had only two ear infections in three years, which didn’t seem like a lot to him.

  * * *

  —

  The night before the surgery, Zoe reminded Austin that Jaime couldn’t have anything to eat or drink after nine o’clock that night. They didn’t want her to vomit and aspirate it while she was under general anesthesia. The surgery was at nine A.M. the next day. It was going to be done at Lenox Hill Hospital uptown. Austin was feeling panicked about it, and didn’t want to admit it to Zoe. She was totally calm, and elated every time she talked about the painful ear infections Jaime was going to avoid.

  They told Jaime about it in the morning when she woke up, and Zoe couldn’t give her cereal, fruit, and juice as she always did.

  “We have to get ready,” she told her. “We’re going back to see the nice doctor with the toys who looked in your ears. But we’re meeting him somewhere else. He’s going to give us little tubes for your ears.”

  “No, Mommy,” Jaime said seriously. “I’m not opposed to put things in my ears.” Cathy had told her that after the peas.

  “That’s true. But the doctor can do it. It won’t even hurt.” Jaime put her hands over her ears then and shook her head, and looked at her mother with a question. “Will I get a cast?” She brightened at that. “I want pink.”

  “Not this time. No cast. They can’t put a cast on your ears, or you won’t hear me tell you how much I love you,” she said and kissed Jaime’s neck.

  “I want a cast.” Jaime pouted. That was something she knew, and it made Austin’s heart ache as she said it. At three, she had broken bones twice.

  “Don’t be silly, you don’t need a cast.” Zoe continued the banter as she got Jaime dressed in a pink tracksuit with pink sneakers and a pink coat with toggles on it. She looked adorable and so small as Austin carried her outside, and they hailed a cab to take them to the hospital. It was eight o’clock on a Saturday morning.

  When they got there, they went to same-day surgery. Zoe got Jaime undressed, a house pediatrician examined her, and the anesthesiologist came to talk to all three of them. He said that Dr. Parker was already in surgery. He’d had a case before them, but would speak to them after the tubes were in. The anesthesiologist asked if Zoe and Austin understood the procedure, and they said they did. He said it would be brief, and then he talked to Jaime, and told her she was going to get sleepy for a few minutes, the doctor was going to put little tubes in her ears, and then she would wake up and she’d come back to her mom and dad, and they could go home.

  “You’re not coming with me?” Jaime looked suddenly panicked and leapt into her mother’s arms, as Austin watched, looking grim.

  “May I?” Zoe asked the anesthesiologist and he shook his head.

  Two attendants came to take her to surgery then, and Jaime tried to cling to her mother and looked imploringly at Austin. He felt like a monster as he let them take her away on a gurney, and then he and Zoe sat down in the small room to wait for her. Her clothes were neatly folded on the bed.

  “I don’t know why we had to do this now,” he said with the sound of Jaime screaming for them still ringing in his head. “Why couldn’t we wait to see if she had more ear infections? This seems so extreme, and premature to me.” The only reason he had agreed to it was because Zoe said Cathy thought it was a good idea.

  “It’s not extreme, it doesn’t hurt, and ear infections do. It’s the smart, responsible thing to do,” Zoe said convincingly, as they waited.

  “She’s only three, for heaven’s sake. My nephew didn’t have it done till he was six.” Austin stood and stared out the window, and Zoe sat quietly in a chair, and forty-five minutes later, Jaime was back. She looked wide awake and had already come out of the anesthetic. Dr. Parker was with them, as the attendants rolled her into the room, and she sat on the bed and smiled. Austin looked enormously relieved, as he picked her up and held her with tears in his eyes.

  “It went perfectly,” the doctor assured them as he took off his surgical cap. He was still wearing scrubs as he smiled at them both, and then at Jaime. “She was very brave, but when I was talking to her, she fell asleep. She can do whatever she wants today, normal activity, and a big breakfast, I’ll bet. And no more nasty ear infections like all the ones she’s had till now. Too many for mom to even remember how many there were.” He smiled at Zoe, as Austin glanced at her with obvious surprise. “Give me a call if you have any questions or problems. I don’t think you will.” He shook hands with both of them and rushed out, as Austin stared at his wife, and gently set Jaime down on the bed.

  “Did you tell him she’s had a lot of ear infections, ‘too many to even remember how many,’ in order to convince him to do it?” Austin asked her in a low voice.

  “I can’t recall what I said. I told him how bad the last one was, that was enough,” she said as she started to get Jaime dressed.

  “But she’s only had two in her whole life,” Austin said, trying to hide his anger from their child. “You lied to him, Zoe, didn’t you, so he’d do it?
”

  She turned to him and looked him in the eye. “I don’t want her to get any more ear infections. Is that so terrible?” Austin didn’t answer her, and as soon as Jaime was dressed, they went home in a cab. He didn’t say a word on the way downtown, as Jaime chattered, and Zoe avoided his eyes.

  Zoe was giving Jaime breakfast when Austin went for a walk, and as soon as he left the building, he called Cathy on her cell.

  “How are you?” she asked, surprised to hear from him.

  “Pissed, I think.”

  “Is Jaime okay?” She put her doctor’s voice on immediately, ready to focus on the child.

  “She seems to be, she came out of the surgery in less than an hour. Was this your idea or Zoe’s, and did you really think it was a good idea?”

  “What surgery? What happened? Did she get hurt?” She sounded surprised.

  “We just had ear tubes surgically implanted, with Jaime under general anesthesia. I have the distinct impression that Zoe told the specialist Jaime had recurring ear infections. And she told me you thought it was a good idea.”

  “I don’t know anything about it, in this case. I have patients who’ve had the procedure, but only after chronic ear infections. It’s not dangerous, and the tubes won’t harm her. They’ll take them out eventually or they’ll fall out on their own. But in Jaime’s case, after two episodes, it seems very premature, and unnecessary, to be honest. I’m surprised the ENT was willing to do it.”

  “Zoe told him Jaime had had more infections than she could remember. And she told me you suggested it as a preventive measure against future infections.”

  “Shit,” she said, reverting to his friend and not just their doctor. “She never told me she was considering it. Probably because she knew I would have discouraged her. Jaime doesn’t need that yet, and maybe never will. It won’t do anything bad to her, but she didn’t need to go through it. And I never encourage general anesthesia unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Austin was livid and Cathy could hear it.

  “I think she overstepped on this one. Can I talk to her about it? I don’t like her using me to convince you of something I knew nothing about.”

  “Neither do I. Bluntly put, she lied to me, she used you to convince me to do it. Once she told me you liked the idea, I endorsed it blindly. She lied to all of us, you, me, and the doctor.”

  “She didn’t lie to me,” Cathy corrected him, “she just didn’t tell me.”

  “Okay, a sin of omission in your case, and of commission in mine,” he conceded.

  “You must be very upset,” she said sympathetically. She loved Zoe as a friend, but this wasn’t right, just to get what she wanted. It was cheating.

  “Furious is more like it. My wife lied to me, and my three-year-old just had a general anesthetic unnecessarily and under false pretenses. How would you feel?”

  “Probably as mad as you are. Although knowing Zoe, she had good intentions. She just went a little too far. I’m sorry I didn’t know, I would have told you, and we could have talked her out of it. If anything like it ever happens again, you can count on me to let you know.” He believed she would. At this point, he trusted Cathy more than his wife. “I’m really sorry, Austin.”

  “Thank you.”

  Cathy suspected that the sparks were going to fly between them that night, and she was right. As soon as Jaime fell asleep, Austin quietly closed the door to their bedroom, and turned to his wife with his eyes blazing. Until then, he had avoided her all day, but he was face-to-face with her now.

  “What the hell were you thinking? You lied to me to get me to agree to a surgical procedure for our daughter. You told me Cathy thought it was a good idea, and she knew nothing about it. And you lied to the doctor and told him she’d had recurring ear infections, when she’s had only two. Are you crazy? You conned me into agreeing to general anesthesia by lying to me. Zoe, what are you doing? It’s so goddamn unfair. I would never do that to you.”

  “I don’t want her to be sick all the time, like she was with the last one. Why wait until she’s had a bunch of ear infections? I wanted to prevent them in the future.”

  “By lying to me and the doctor, and not telling our pediatrician? How am I ever supposed to trust you again? How would you feel if I did that to you?”

  “I’d realize that you did it for Jaime’s good. I was doing the right thing for her, whether you think so or not,” she defended herself hotly, and justified everything she’d done.

  “The end does not justify the means in this case, when you lied to everyone involved. I would never have agreed to a general anesthetic, even for five minutes, if I’d known the truth. You took away my right to make an informed decision as her father. You’re not her only parent, Zoe. I’m here too, and the decisions about Jaime have to be ours, jointly, and if we don’t agree, we’ll have to work out some kind of compromise. But don’t you ever do something like this again.”

  “I promise, I won’t,” she said in the voice of a chastised child. “I love you, and I’m sorry. But I knew it was the right thing for her.”

  “That’s not for you to decide on your own. You’re only half that voice, and I’m the other half. Don’t forget it again.” He stormed out of their bedroom then and slept on the couch in his small home office. Zoe didn’t try to convince him to sleep in their bedroom. She knew he needed time to cool off.

  On Sunday, he told her he was taking Jaime to visit his parents at their house in Sag Harbor, and said in a stiff voice that she was welcome to come. But she knew that the time in the car with him would be tense, which wouldn’t be good for any of them, least of all Jaime, and she didn’t want to see his parents, particularly his mother.

  “I’ve got some work to do,” she said quietly. “Why don’t you and Jaime enjoy your parents. Give them my love.” He didn’t argue with her or insist that she come, and he hadn’t asked her before he’d called his parents and suggested the visit. One of his brothers was going to visit them that day too, and it would be nice for Jaime to see her cousins, since Zoe never took Jaime to New Jersey or Connecticut to see them, and he always had to organize it. He and Jaime left half an hour later. He didn’t mention the ear tube incident again. There was nothing left to say about it, it was done, but he hadn’t swallowed it yet, which Zoe could see. She had no regrets about it, she still believed she had done the right thing, even if her methods had been somewhat dubious. She knew her motives were pure. It was all for Jaime’s good, which justified everything, even if Austin couldn’t see that. At least not yet.

  Cathy called a little while later, as Zoe was working on some papers for the shelter.

  “I’m calling as your friend, not your doctor,” she said clearly at the outset. “How’s Austin?”

  “Not happy. He’ll get over it,” Zoe said coolly. “I gather he talked to you yesterday.”

  “He did. Zoe, please don’t use me to justify medical procedures for Jaime unless you talk to me first. I would have tried to talk you out of it, which is probably why you didn’t ask me. It may prove to be the right thing for her, but not now, after only two ear infections in three years. It was way too soon.”

  “I just didn’t want her to go through all that pain again,” she said with a sigh, “she screamed in agony for two days.”

  “And it stopped when we got her on the right antibiotic. I just don’t want to get in the middle of things between you and Austin. I love you both, you’re my favorite friends, and the best parents I know. And the three of us trust each other. I want to keep it that way.”

  “He’ll calm down,” Zoe said confidently, with no apparent remorse.

  “I’m sure he will, but he sounded very pissed.”

  “He is, or was yesterday. All I want is what’s best for Jaime.”

  “I know you do. But you may have to go about it a l
ittle more openly, to give everyone a chance to vote.” Zoe didn’t answer. They talked for a few moments, and then hung up, and Zoe went back to the papers she was working on. They were applying for a federal grant, which would benefit the children they protected.

  Austin and Jaime had gotten to his parents’ house by then. His brother and his family hadn’t arrived yet, and his parents were happy to see them.

  “Where’s Zoe?” Constance asked as she poured apple juice into a glass for Jaime.

  “She had homework,” Jaime answered her grandmother. “She said to send you and Grampa George her love.”

  “Send her ours.” Constance smiled at her. Jaime went out to the garden with her grandfather then to play with their dog, a little Maltese named Molly. Constance looked at her son after they went outside. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “You look stressed,” she said cautiously, wondering what was going on, and why Zoe hadn’t come.

  “I had a long week. I’m doing a bunch of pro bono cases for the shelter, with some nasty characters. They always are. By the way, Jaime had ear tubes put in yesterday.” He decided that he’d better tell her before Jaime did.

  “Patrick has them too, and they were thinking of doing them for Seth. I didn’t know Jaime had ear problems, other than the infection she had a few weeks ago.”

  “Zoe thought we should do it.” He looked tense as he said it, and his mother nodded and didn’t comment. At least Jaime hadn’t gotten injured recently, which was an improvement, and made her think that she had been too extreme with her worries. Maybe Jaime had just been a rambunctious toddler, as they said.

  His brother arrived shortly after that, and they talked about their respective plans for Thanksgiving. Both his brothers were going to their in-laws’ and his parents had decided to go on a cruise for the first time. Usually, they all got together in Sag Harbor for Thanksgiving, but not this year. Zoe’s father and Pam always invited them to Santa Barbara, but they never went. Zoe didn’t want to be forced to make a choice of which parent to visit, so she visited neither. And her mother was working that day. She hated holidays and had ever since Rose’s death. Austin and Zoe would be spending the holiday at home, which was different but didn’t displease him.