“How can you know?”
“I know because of what just happened, and you know it too. You’re not going to make it to term.”
“Andrew, look at me. Look at me! I won’t end this pregnancy.”
He moved over and sat down beside her, taking her into his arms. The rage had already passed through him, or maybe it was only the calm before the torrent, but his voice was still and calm as he said, “I know.”
24
The BoardRoom at Blair Bio-Medical could have held far more people, and yet it seemed full with Malcolm, Brenda, and the company lawyer gathered on one side of the conference table and Jones seated on the other. Lara sat at the head, in the chair of the board director. “This,” she began, “is no time to leave things unsaid. You three in my company have known what no one else has. And now I need to clear up what will happen when I’m gone.”
Brenda was already crying and shaking her head as if to rebuke reality so sternly that it would cease to be the truth; so Lara repeated, gently and firmly, “When I’m gone. Malcolm will run the company, with Brenda in expanded duties. My stock will be in a shared trust—administered by Malcolm, Brenda, and Dr. Andrew Jones. All profits and capital value from my stock will accrue to the Blair Foundation, with this change: All gifts will be made anonymously.”
She looked around the table. “That’s all. Malcolm, you’re in charge as of right now.”
Malcolm had to take a moment to find his voice, and when he found it he had to clear it. “Where will you be?”
“There’s a little clinic in the mountains that needs an extra doctor. I’m going to go back there and look at every day as a day I’m living, not as a day I’m dying.”
Malcolm, Brenda, and even the company attorney were all having the same experience; each felt the moment in their own way, of course, but all of them floated in a sea of sadness and defeat.
But to Jones the moment was somewhat different; he felt torn. He felt as if there was something he should do, if only he could do it. As the others sat across the table from him and wept, Jones secretly slipped something from the inner fold of his wallet and glanced down at it.
It was the old postcard of Creation—wrinkled and stained.
Lara took a long and shaky breath. “This isn’t a time to leave things unsaid. I love you all.”
She stood and left the room.
Jones looked at their tearful faces across the table from him, and then he stood and followed Lara.
He caught up with her at the far end of the hallway. She stopped, turned to him, and whispered, “I’m so sorry, Andrew. I told you I wanted to give you my now. I didn’t know now would be so hard.”
He said, quietly but firmly, “If I could have a child who’s part of you, I’d be grateful for every breath I took. Either way, I’ll have you with me every day I live, no matter where you are.”
She thought she had steeled herself against any more tears, but they welled into her eyes now.
“It’s all right if you cry,” he told her.
She said, “I have to tell you the truth; I’ve never been able to tell you anything but the truth. I wanted this baby. In whatever way I knew how to pray, I prayed for it. I didn’t want a baby just for me. I wanted someone to love you the rest of your life, the way you deserve to be loved.”
They didn’t embrace; they didn’t have to.
Jones said, “There’s a hospital down the block. And any equipment you have here could be transferred there, right?”
“No, Andrew. No. You can’t try to change this. I can’t leave you with that.”
“And would you have me live the rest of my life knowing that no one else could save you, and I didn’t try? You were right about Faith. I did my best. I did all I could do. You’re carrying our baby. You have to let me try.”
And she knew he was right.
25
Once they had made their decision, they wasted no time; there was no time to waste. They made their preparations, fired by an ever growing sense of urgency. Lara’s group found a brand-new surgical suite in a hospital two blocks from their building and began to outfit it right away with gear from the Blair labs. The transporting, installing, and testing went on around the clock, and because the word of what they were doing and whom they were doing it for had spread quickly, not even the teamsters asked for overtime.
Malcolm and Brenda saw to it that Lara checked into the hospital with the attitude of a patient, not a physician, for doctors are notoriously bad patients. Brenda stayed with her constantly, obsessing about Lara’s diet, rest, pre-op medications, and even the amount of light coming through the windows. Part of Jones’s idea in allowing this was that if Brenda complained enough, Lara would keep insisting that everything was okay. The other part of the idea was that Brenda couldn’t help herself, and if she stayed with Lara and saw to her perfect preparation, then Brenda couldn’t interfere anywhere else.
Jones made his phone calls, and Angelica flew in his best team—Stafford, Merrill, and the two surgical nurses who assisted them in Virginia. Even before he let them check into their hotel rooms, Jones took them to the hospital and showed them the operating room setup, with Malcolm there with them to calm his own fears in turning Lara over to a group he didn’t know. The newcomers, compulsive perfectionists by profession, frowned at the unfamiliar equipment surrounding them, but Jones calmed their concerns. “It’s all for monitoring and reference, pure and simple,” he told them. “Everything else is the same.”
Jones’s team took it all in. “Is there anything else you need?” Malcolm asked.
None of them could think of anything additional they could possibly need; the room was already packed. Malcolm took a deep breath, and then, as hard as it was for him, he left the OR and headed back to Lara’s room, where he found it necessary to stave off the impending mutiny of the hospital’s regular nursing staff, who were all threatening to resign if Brenda was allowed to keep prowling unmuzzled.
Jones gathered his friends around him; he had e-mailed them the basics of the procedure they were about to perform and had made sure the plane carried a complete set of scans and even a video monitor so that on the flight up they could study his trial run on Roscoe. He knew they were aware of everything of a technical nature that they could possibly need to know. Still, he waited for them to ask any questions they might have. They were silent.
Jones said, “If the aneurism bleeds before we can close it off, we induce coma, to shut the brain down until it can heal. We’re not gonna let her die on the table. We are NOT going to let her die. Everyone understand?”
They did.
A nurse shaved Lara’s head. She sat motionless as the locks fell off. She had thought that this would bother her more than anything else about the surgical preparation, but she was wrong; all of it seemed the same. As much concern as she had around her, as many people who cared, no one could take her place; she was alone now.
The operating room at the Chicago hospital down the street from her building had become a replica of the Blair Bio-Med lab, and technicians were in place at all the monitors behind the glass separation wall they had installed overnight. Lasers and reference cameras were aimed all over the surgical area; the tools—saws, drills, expanders, forceps, and the finer instruments too—were arranged beside the table. But there was no Roscoe now. And as yet there was no surgeon.
The University of Virginia surgical group was in the prep room, scrubbed up and waiting like a team before a championship match; but Jones was not there.