So much he still didn’t know, not just about writing but about finding markets and everything else that had to do with the business. He was at least as surprised as anyone else that somebody’d bought one piece. Could lightning really strike twice? Could he be, or become, a creative-writing major who’d got lucky?
How could you know something like that? The only answer that occurred to him was, by writing and seeing if anything else stuck. He was no more diligent than he’d ever had to be. You needed that stuff if you were going to go anywhere in this racket. That seemed obvious.
Did he have it in him? That seemed much less so. All he could do was give it his best shot, whatever that turned out to be. If he didn’t decide to do something else in the meantime, maybe he’d find out.
The nurse took Louise Ferguson’s temperature with a gadget she stuck into her ear. The old under-the-tongue thermometer was as antique as a Victorian thundermug. Measuring blood pressure still involved a cuff around the upper arm and a stethoscope, though. After writing the data on Louise’s chart, the nurse said, “This all seems fine. How are you feeling today?”
The only way she could have made that more patronizing would have been to ask How are we feeling today? But we was, or were, involved, or Louise wouldn’t have been sitting impatiently in this patient room. “Pregnant,” she answered, her voice nothing but grim.
“Well, yes.” Nothing dented the nurse’s good cheer. “Dr. Suzuki will see you in a few minutes.” She bustled out and almost closed the door behind her.
“Happy day,” Louise said, but not very loud.
Travis Suzuki was several years younger than she was. He always seemed bright and self-assured; she’d rarely met a doctor short on self-confidence. By the way he swept into the examination room, he expected her to genuflect. “How are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m doing all right,” Louise said.
He glanced at her chart. “Your numbers look good. None of the tests we’ve run show anything abnormal about the fetus. If you proceed with the pregnancy, chances are you’ll have a healthy baby. If you don’t… Well, you’re approaching the end of your first trimester. If you wait longer than that to decide to terminate, things get more complicated, as I’m sure you know.”
“Yes. I do know that,” Louise said. “I’m not thrilled about any of this. I’m talking to lawyers again. Like I told you, my boyfriend lit out for the tall timber when he found out he’d knocked me up.”
“That’s… unfortunate,” Dr. Suzuki said.
“Tell me about it!” Louise exclaimed. “Things might’ve been okay if I’d said right away that I’d get rid of it. When I didn’t, Teo-split. If I dispose of it now, I’m still doing what he’d want. I’ll be damned, if you know what I mean.”
Dr. Suzuki nodded. “I think I do,” he said, and she was inclined to believe him-hers wouldn’t be anything close to the first tale of woe he’d heard. As if to prove as much, he went on, “If you have the baby, will you be able to keep from taking out your resentment about its father on it?”
That was a shrewd question. It was one she’d asked herself more than once. “I hope so,” she said slowly. “It’s not the baby’s fault, after all. I understand that.”
“Okay,” he said, though that was more likely acknowledgment than agreement. Snap! Snap! He donned a pair of thin rubber gloves. “Let me call Terri back into the room, then, and I’ll examine you.”
Terri! That was the nurse’s name. No matter how often Louise had come in here, she never remembered it. She pulled down her panties and put her feet in the stirrups at the end of the table. The underwear was cotton, severely functional but comfortable. For the first time since her early twenties, she’d worn little skimpy transparent nylon things while she was with Teo. He liked them. Well, now she didn’t have to worry about what Teo liked-or about wedgies, either.
Terri came in to preserve propriety. Couldn’t have a male doctor prodding a woman’s private parts with no one around to make sure hanky-panky didn’t ensue, no sir. As Dr. Suzuki started doing what he did, Louise asked him, “Do you get sick and tired of staring at pussy all day?”
He straightened up with a startled laugh. “Nobody ever asked me that before,” he said. “You bet I do. You do it for a while, it’s a job like any other job.”
And maybe that was true, and maybe it wasn’t. More likely, it was true and false at the same time. He wouldn’t care about a little old lady’s twat any more than he cared about her elbow. But if a cute young thing with a cute young thing came in, Louise guessed his interest might be more than strictly professional. She’d heard somewhere that gynecologists had one of the highest divorce rates of any kind of doctor. She couldn’t remember where, and she didn’t know for sure it was so, but she wouldn’t have been surprised.
His fingering of her was nothing but businesslike. Dr. Russell had been the same way, even though she was younger then. Once, when she was pregnant with Rob, Colin had come in with her for an examination. He hadn’t liked watching another man’s fingers probing her. He understood it was in the line of duty. He hadn’t liked it anyway.
Dr. Suzuki finished what he was doing. “You can put your pants on again,” he said as he peeled off the gloves and dropped them into the trash can.
Louise got out of the stirrups and smoothed down her skirt before she reonned her underwear. “Is everything okay?” she asked.
“It certainly seems to be. You’ve taken good care of yourself,” Dr. Suzuki answered, by which he could only mean You’re no spring chicken, sweetheart. Well, that was nothing Louise didn’t already know. Suzuki went on, “If you decide to bring the baby to term, I don’t see any medical reason why you shouldn’t have a successful delivery. I don’t see any reason now, I should say. If your blood pressure rises, if you start showing protein in your urine… That’s a different story.”
“I understand,” Louise said. “If I was going to end the pregnancy, my reasons wouldn’t be medical.”
“Well, yes.” The OB-GYN frowned a little. “I’m not so well equipped to advise you on, uh, personal choices.”
“I understand that, too.” Louise’s mouth twisted, as if she’d just tasted something bitter. “I loved that man, you know. I loved him like I hadn’t loved anybody since I was a kid. And he loved me back. He did-till I got pregnant. He couldn’t handle that, so he split. And so here I am.”
“Here you are,” Dr. Suzuki agreed. “Which brings us back to the question I asked you before.”
“I have been wondering about whether I’d take it out on the baby,” Louise said slowly, “but I really don’t think so. I’d try to remember the good times with Teo, not the bad ones. There were some. There were quite a few, till he bailed on me.”
“That seems like a commonsense attitude.” Suzuki sounded cautious. Of course he did. What else were doctors for? He had his reasons, too: “Will you be able to keep it up at three in the morning, when the baby’s got you up for the fourth time that night and you still have to go to work in the morning?”
“I don’t know,” Louise said. “But any mom alive is gonna want to punt her kid when something like that happens.”
He smiled. “True. She may want to, but she won’t do it.”
“I don’t think I will, either. I know it’s not the baby’s fault-that’s what babies do. And by then coffee’ll taste good to me again, so that’ll help me keep going.”
“Okay. I can’t tell you what to do, and I won’t try. But I do want to make sure you understand your options.” Plainly, Dr. Suzuki believed she was off her rocker for even thinking about keeping the kid.
“I’d better, by now. I haven’t done much but think about them since I found out I was pregnant.” Louise didn’t tell him she was one of those people who were more likely to do something because all their friends and relations thought they were crazy if they did. Leaving Colin for Teo, for instance.
Yeah, and look how well that turned out, her mind gibed. But she remained convinced she was happier now, in spite of everything, than she would have been had she stayed. Staying would have meant slow death. She’d never felt more vital, more alive, than she had since she walked out of the house.