The Midwife's Confession Part 10

"Oh, Tara, this is horrible! Ted didn't even want me to bring the box of cards home, and I wish now that I'd listened to him. If I'd just thrown it away, I wouldn't know any of this."

"But you do know. We know."

"I hate this," I said. "If we go to the police...I don't want a media frenzy. And Noelle...her legacy. All the good she's done. She'll be dragged through the mud."

"Look." Tara leaned back in the booth. "We have very, very slim evidence here. And maybe she was writing a short story, for all we know. I think the first thing we should do is try to figure out who Anna is. If we discover there really is an Anna and this looks like something that really happened, then we can figure out the next step."

I felt both relief and guilt that I'd dragged her into this. "I'm sorry I told you, Tara. It's the last thing you need right now, but I didn't want to be alone with it."

"You're not alone with it, sweetie."

"So-" I turned the letter to face me again, the words blurring a bit in my vision "-how do we try to figure out who Anna is? Noelle said she read an article about her in the paper, so we could...I don't know. Check old newspapers, I guess?"

"Maybe the baby that died-" Tara shuddered as she said the word "-maybe that was the last baby Noelle delivered."

I felt a chill. "I have her record books," I said. Could I be that close to knowing whose baby Noelle had dropped?

The waitress neared our table and I could see her checking out the uneaten food. "How are you doing over here?" she asked.

"We're fine," I said, and Tara made a little whisking motion with her hand that said, Please leave us alone, as clearly as if she'd spoken the words.

"I can read the last entry in her record books," I said once the waitress was gone. "If it was a girl, well..." I looked at Tara and shrugged.

"If it's a girl," Tara said, "then we'll figure out what to do next."

18.

Noelle UNC Wilmington

1988.

Noelle was happier than she'd ever been in her life. Her cla.s.ses and clinicals were going well and she loved her work as a Resident a.s.sistant. The girls on her floor turned to her easily with their concerns, and it wasn't unusual to find her sitting with a group of them on the floor at the end of the hall, chatting about their boyfriends or their professors or their relationships with one another. The gathering had the feel of a mini support group, a relaxed get-together with meat at its heart. Noelle made sure everyone felt welcome, though. She didn't want her end-of-the-hall group to turn into a clique.

The other RAs thought she was overly involved with the students. "You should just be there in case they need something," they said, but Noelle felt protective of her charges. She wanted to be their safe harbor. The night one of them nearly died of alcohol poisoning, she wept because she should have seen it coming. But she did recognize another student's bulimia, intervening before it was too late, and she counseled yet another girl as she decided what to do about an unwanted pregnancy-even though she was privately heartbroken when the girl decided to have an abortion.

All in all, she loved her girls. The fact that she loved one of them more than the others was something she was learning to hide.

She'd gotten her emotions at least somewhat under control when it came to Emerson McGarrity, doing her best to treat her like all the other girls on her floor. If anyone noticed that she paid a little more attention to Emerson, that she lit up each time she saw her, that she questioned her more than the other girls about her adjustment to campus life, her cla.s.ses, her family, no one said a word about it, at least not to her. She no longer needed Emerson to know their relationship. Being close to her, being a part of her life, was enough. It was clear that Emerson knew nothing about her mother's teenage pregnancy, and clear that Noelle's existence had been swept under the rug. Noelle made a conscious decision to leave it there forever. She wouldn't hurt Emerson or her family, but one way or another, she would always be a part of her sister's life. She wouldn't lose her now that she'd found her.

She was coming to like Tara, too. Tara's exuberance was a good counterbalance to Emerson's gentle, calm nature and she was far deeper than Noelle had originally guessed. For most of Tara's life, her mother had spent her time in and out of psychiatric hospitals. It was not something she talked about easily, and Noelle felt touched when she finally revealed that part of herself to her. Noelle came to see Tara's love of theater as her escape from a childhood and adolescence that had been difficult to endure.

There was, however, one small, niggling problem in Noelle's life: Sam Vincent.

Plenty of guys on campus were intrigued by Noelle, but Noelle herself had been drawn-seriously drawn-to only two men in her life. Sam was number three.

She met him the second week of school when she stopped by Tara and Emerson's room to offer them a couple of granola bars. He was there alone because Tara and Emerson were baking cookies in the dorm kitchen, and he was stretched out on Tara's neatly made bed, writing something in a notebook. He looked up and gave her a quick, easy smile and that was all it took. The smile slayed her. She felt her internal organs melt and her heart thumped as hard as it had the first time she'd walked into this same room and laid eyes on Emerson.

"You're Sam," she said, glancing at the long-haired guy in the picture on Tara's dresser. This Sam looked different. The guy in the picture was a boy. The short-haired guy on the bed, a man. He was slender. Not overtly masculine; macho had never appealed to her. Thick, jet-black lashes framed his blue eyes, and his lips were full and a little pouty. It was only the broad cut of his chin that saved him from being too pretty.

"Yeah," he said. "I'm waiting for Tara. You live in the dorm?"

"I'm the RA. Noelle."

"Oh, yeah." He sat up a little straighter, his back against the wall. Setting his notebook on the bed beside him, he folded his arms across his chest. "Tara told me about you. She thinks you're cool."

Noelle smiled and sat down in Emerson's desk chair. "I'm glad she thinks so. I like her, too." She nodded toward the notebook. "What are you working on?"

"Journal." He grinned with the tiniest hint of embarra.s.sment as he lifted the notebook from the bed and set it on his thigh. His arms were very tan and dusted with dark hair. "Thought I'd give it a try," he said. "You know, writing down my deepest, darkest thoughts."

She loved the answer. What guy journaled? If she hadn't already pinned him as a rarity, she did now.

They talked for a while about UNC and his plans for law school. He told her he'd known Tara since they were kids, although Noelle already knew that. Actually, nothing he told her was new; Tara talked about him all the time. Words pa.s.sed between them, but they could have been any words at all. They could have been talking about the weather or what they'd had for dinner the night before. It wasn't the words that were being communicated. Something deeper was going on. Noelle felt it and she knew in all those melting, hungry organs of her body that he felt it, too. The way he held her gaze. The way he couldn't stop smiling at her no matter what he was saying.

She offered him one of the granola bars and watched his tanned, perfect fingers slit open the wrapper. He took a bite, then licked a crumb from his lips, his blue eyes back on her. She pictured him in her bed, both of them nude. He was between her legs, slipping inside her. She didn't even try to erase the image from her mind. If he had not been Tara's, she would have asked him flat out, "Do you want to make love?" because that was her style. Why mince words? And if he were not Tara's he would say yes. But he was Tara's and, deep in her heart, she knew he always would be.

19.

Anna Washington, D.C.

2010.

There were few things I hated as much as having Haley under general anesthesia. For an hour or two or three, it was as though she was gone. I always tried to rea.s.sure myself that at least she was in no pain during the time she was out. Yet the goneness, the unreachableness, still scared me.

She'd received the transfusion a couple of days before and her red blood count had bounced back nicely, but now the surgeon was moving her port from one side of her sore chest to the other and aspirating her bone marrow at the same time. It was never ending, the torture they put her through. Haley'd been stoic when the surgeon told her his plans for today, but I had the feeling she would have chewed him out if Bryan hadn't been present. She was on her good behavior around Bryan. I actually preferred her feisty side. I liked when she cussed out her doctors. Holding in her anger and frustration wasn't a good thing. She wanted her Daddy to think she was a sweet girl, though-which she was most of the time, when she wasn't loaded up on steroids and fighting for her life.

I didn't think Haley totally grasped the implications of this bone marrow aspiration. They'd be looking at her MRD level. Minimum Residual Disease. If it was too high, it would mean the chemo was not doing the job and she'd need a bone marrow transplant. Going down that road terrified me. It would mean more grueling chemotherapy plus full-body radiation to destroy her immune system and all that simply to prepare her for the transplant itself. And of course a donor would have to be found. So if I'd been the praying type, I would have been praying for a very low MRD. Very, very low. Although it had required nearly two full years of treatment, chemo alone had taken care of the cancer when she was a toddler. I was hoping for the same outcome this time.

I made sure the staff had my cell number, then walked down to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee and to check in with my office. Bryan was on a job interview in Bethesda. He'd offered to cancel it when I told him about the surgery, but I encouraged him to go. I'm used to dealing with her alone, I nearly said, but caught myself. Now wasn't the time to guilt-trip him.

I didn't go straight back to the East Wing, but walked instead to the neonatal intensive care unit. It wasn't the first time since Haley's relapse that I'd found myself wandering through the halls of the NICU, even though they now had the babies safely tucked away in private rooms and I wasn't able to see them as I could years ago. I was actually glad. I wanted those babies to be out of sight.

My work occasionally took me to hospitals, and I always wound up trying to see the babies. The tiniest babies got to me. All those wires and tubes. Those little rib cages pumping air in and out, every breath looking like an effort. They were so vulnerable. Their dependence on others to protect them always cut into me.

Why did I do that to myself? Why did I look? Why did I search the features of the babies, looking for one who resembled Lily? I sometimes felt as though I couldn't leave. I needed to stand guard. The nurses couldn't watch every baby every minute. Even here in the remodeled NICU at Children's, I searched for evil intentions in the face of each person I saw. That's when I knew it was time to walk away. I became the director of the Missing Children's Bureau in part because of my own pain and my pa.s.sion, but also because I'd been able to hold on to my sanity. That sanity allowed me to distance myself from my own ordeal so that I could be rational as I kept the bureau functioning. That's why I had to walk away when I began to imagine someone-one of the nurses? A total stranger?-coming into the nursery, detaching one of those fragile, helpless infants from her tubes and wires and slipping out the door with her.

I'd opted for a home birth with Haley for that reason alone. I'd never been the home-birth type. I wasn't one of those women who distrusted the medical system or worried about having an unnecessary C-section because my obstetrician wanted to get out on the golf course. But I knew I wanted to give birth to Haley surrounded by trusted friends, by a midwife whose references I'd grilled for hours and a doula I'd known forever.

My phone rang as I walked toward the oncology unit and I checked the caller ID. Haley's surgeon. I stopped walking and pressed the b.u.t.ton on my Bluetooth. "How is she?" I asked.

"She's in recovery," he said. "She did great."

"I'll be right there."

I called Bryan as I started walking again. "She's in recovery," I said. I could hear a woman's voice in the background. Laughter. Was he at a job interview or what? For a moment, I felt a profound stab of distrust. Then I reminded myself once more that he was back in the area for Haley, not for me. I had to remember that.

"How'd she do?" he asked.

"They said great."

"I'll be there in a couple of hours," he said. "Is that okay?"

"That's fine." I heard the coldness in my voice.

"Can I bring you anything?"

"No, I'm good." I walked faster as I neared the recovery room. "I just want to see her."

In the recovery room, I slipped my hand into Haley's. Her puffy little face was at peace for the moment. I sat down next to the bed and watched for the flutter of eyelids. The twitch of her flaky lips. Any sign that she was coming back to me. She'd had to have general anesthesia three times in the past couple of months and each time I worried she would not come back the same girl, that somehow the anesthesia would alter her. But Haley opened her eyes and I saw my brave daughter in her tired smile.

"Ta da," she said.

I touched her cheek. "It went perfectly," I said. "Just great."

A nurse lowered the blue hospital gown a few inches to check the pink skin around the new port in Haley's chest. "How's your pain on a scale of one to-"

"Three," Haley said before the nurse could finish the question.

"Three in Haley world is about a six in typical people world," the nurse said. She knew my daughter. Everyone at the hospital knew her. They called her a "frequent flier," one of those kids who returned to Children's again and again.

"Whatever," Haley said. She raised her eyes to mine. "Where's Dad?"

"On his way."

"Good," she said, and the corners of her mouth curled up ever so slightly as she drifted back to sleep.

I was still sitting with her in her lime-green hospital room an hour later. She'd been awake off and on in the recovery room, but now she slept deeply and I let her. I sat on the sofa that converted to a double bed, doing a little work on my laptop. It was admin stuff, boring but necessary. Every few minutes, I'd stop and look at Haley's face, her too-pale, too-rounded cheeks and the remnants of a rash on her neck from one of her medications. I'd tucked Fred into her arms, and his big brown plastic eyes stared into s.p.a.ce. After a while, a nurse walked into the room. He was African-American, skinny as a toothpick and bespectacled, and I recognized him right away.

"Tom!"

"Hey, Ms. Knightly," he said. "You remember me?"

"I do!" I stood and gave him a hug. Ten years earlier, Tom had been one of Haley's nurses, a favorite of both of ours. He looked exactly the same. "I don't believe you're still here!" I said.

"Where am I going to go?" He laughed. "I've actually been out for the past few months taking care of some family business-" he rolled his eyes "-and when I came in this morning and saw Haley Hope Knightly on the board..." He shook his head. "I'm sorry she has to go through this again."

"Me, too," I said. I remembered him slipping one time long ago, talking about how he often saw kids come back to the oncology unit years after remission. Strange, the things you remembered. The things that could haunt you. He'd caught himself; I remembered that, too. He'd backpedaled, telling me that most kids did just fine and that he was sure Haley would be one of them.

I watched as he took Haley's vital signs and adjusted one of the bags hanging from the IV pole. Then his gaze lit on the framed photograph of Haley and my nieces where it sat on the nightstand. He let out a whoop and picked it up.

"The cousins!" he said. "Look at them! All grown up."

"You remember them?" I asked, surprised.

"How could I forget them? They'd come barrelin' into the room like a flock of geese, chattering up a storm, looking more like quintuplets than sisters."

"Quadruplets," I corrected. "There were only four of them. Just seemed like more than that. One set of twins and another two just a couple of years apart."

"I have to tell you, I hated the days they visited." He laughed. "They'd come in all chaotic with their little-girl germs."

"Haley loved it, though," I said.

Tom pointed to the girl in the center of the photograph. "And this here in the middle is our Miss Haley." The picture had been taken in the Outer Banks last summer. The redbrick Corolla lighthouse stood in the distance behind the girls who were posing like little vamps in their bathing suits. Madison and Mandy stood on the left. Megan and Melanie on the right. Each of them wore her hair in a dark ponytail slung over her shoulder. Haley stood out from her cousins with her lighter brown hair. Her lighter eyes. She'd been giggling so hard it had been a challenge to get her to hold still long enough for me to take the picture. Haley looked so incredibly healthy in the picture. No sign of the disease that had been planting its seeds in her body at that very moment. She'd insisted on bringing the picture to the hospital with her each time she came. I hadn't wanted her to. What was it like for her to see that vibrant former version of herself every day?

"I hear her daddy's with y'all this time," Tom said. He'd set down the picture and was writing something in Haley's chart.

All sorts of responses ran through my mind, but I decided to be charitable. "He is," I said. "He was living in California, but he moved back here as soon as I told him Haley'd relapsed."

"I remember the last time, how it was just you and her." He finished writing and looked across Haley's bed at me. "I don't remember every single patient but I remember you and Haley real well, because even though she was just a kid, she was like a little adult. She took care of you as much as you took care of her."

It might have seemed a weird thing to say except that it was so true. Haley always seemed to sense that there was something broken inside of me, even when I hid that broken ness from the rest of the world. She knew. When she got older and I told her about Lily, she finally understood. She seemed to feel the loss herself.

"You were a drug rep back then, right?" Tom asked.

"Uh-huh." I closed my laptop. "I quit when Haley got sick." My job had already been on the skids because I refused to travel once Haley was born and travel had been a major part of my work. All those trips to Wilmington. I'd once liked that city. Now I loathed it. "Bryan had just gotten out of the military and was working for IBM."

"I don't remember him at all," Tom said.