“When you come back.”
“But I need to make calls.”
“Go and take a break.”
“Sir, yes, sir.” Perez mock-saluted as he left.
“So how are you doing?” the nurse asked. She had a pleasantly fleshy face, with animated blue eyes and a freckled nose, and she wore her wiry, reddish hair back in an unfashionably long ponytail.
“Fine, I guess.” She wasn’t about to open up about her feelings to someone she hardly knew. The nurse tugged over a rolling cart, slid out a digital thermometer, and replaced its plastic tip.
“Open wide.”
She obeyed like a baby bird, and the nurse stuck the thermometer into her mouth.
“You slept well, and your color looks good. I need to check your vitals.”
The thermometer beeped. The nurse slid it out, read it quickly, then replaced it in the cart.
“You’re back to normal,” she said.
“Great. Is that what you have to check out on me?”
“No, I just said that to give us some alone time.” The nurse took the blood pressure cuff from a rack on the wall and began wrapping it around her patient’s upper arm. “I wanted to see how you were feeling. Really feeling, I mean. It’s tough, emotionally, I know. I missed once, myself.”
Missed. That must be the lingo.
“You will get through this, I promise. Take your time.” The nurse squeezed the black rubbery bulb, and the pressure cuff got tighter and tighter.
“Excuse us, ladies!” called a voice from the door. A doctor entered, and two interns followed like a flying wedge of white coats.
“You’re early, doc,” the nurse said, her smile fading. She let the cuff deflate rapidly.
“Our chief weapon is surprise,” the doctor said, and the young interns laughed.
“Please, no more Monty Python.” The nurse rolled her eyes, folded up the blood pressure cuff, and stuffed it back in the wire rack. “I can’t take any more.”
“Ha! And now for something completely different.” The doctor approached the bed with a sly smile, and the interns laughed again.
“Get ready to fake-laugh, Mrs. Perez,” the nurse said as she patted her arm. “They’re men, so they’ll buy it.” She handed over a cell phone. “Oh, I almost forgot, here’s your hubby’s phone.”
“Thanks,” she said, not recognizing it as Jack’s. He must have gotten a new one.
“See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya.” The nurse hustled from the room.
“I’m Dr. Lehmann, and these are my interns, but you don’t have to know their names. Think of them as Palin and Gilliam to my John Cleese.”
She fake-laughed, and the nurse was right. He bought it. Dr. Lehmann had a square jaw and long nose, and he smelled of fresh cologne. His expression was warm-until it changed.
“Well, my dear, you’ve been through hell.”
“Yes.”
“We did get some reports back, which we need to talk with you about.” Dr. Lehmann frowned almost sternly, a pitchfork folding in the middle of his forehead, under steel gray hair like Brillo. “Your blood work shows unusual hormone levels, consistent with certain medications. Have you taken anything we should know about?”
She blinked, confused. “No, not at all.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing at all. I won’t even take a baby aspirin.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Well.” Dr. Lehmann frowned at her over the steely top of his glasses. “I won’t mince words. To be frank, your levels are consistent with someone who has taken RU 486.”
She didn’t understand.
“Mifeprex. It’s best administered under medical supervision. But unfortunately, it’s commonly self-administered by women who want to induce miscarriage, much later in their pregnancy. It’s commonly known as the abortion pill.”
She couldn’t see where he was going. “Okay, but what does that have to do with me?”
“Perhaps you wanted to end your pregnancy.”
“Me? No. No way.” She felt stricken. “Never.”
Dr. Lehmann eyed her, plainly doubtful. “Many people who administer the pill themselves in the later trimesters don’t realize that it’s very dangerous and could lead to extreme loss of blood, which is what happened in your case. You could have bled to death.”
“You think I tried to give myself an abortion?”
“Yes, I do. You can tell me the truth or not. Up to you.” Dr. Lehmann paused as if for a confession.
“Is that why I miscarried?”
“Yes.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Your levels can be explained by only one thing. In fact, they suggest you took two pills. You wouldn’t be the first woman to have thought of that, either. Still, it’s very, very dangerous.”
“No, that’s not what happened! I did not take the pill, any pill. I never would. I wanted this baby.”
“I’m merely telling you what your blood work reveals.”
“Then it’s not my blood work. There’s been a mistake.” She looked at his lined face, then the equally grave faces of the interns. “There must have been a mistake.”
“Look, Mrs. Perez, this is your business. I want to emphasize to you that it would be unwise to ever do this again.” Dr. Lehmann’s expression softened. “No judgment here. I’m concerned only for your safety.”
She tried to function. “How does it cause an abortion, this pill?”
“The bottom line is that after the pill is ingested, severe cramping occurs and the fetus is expelled. When medically unsupervised, as in your case, it necessitates a D &C to be complete.” Dr. Lehmann checked his watch. “We must be going. Grand rounds this morning. We’ll check on you later.”
She watched them go in silence. After they had left, her thoughts tumbled over one another, fast and furious. She hadn’t taken an abortion pill, much less two. But she’d had cramping that night, so severe she’d doubled over from them. The cramps had started sometime after dinner.
She thought back to that awful night. She and Jack had had their typical Friday night dinner, which he routinely cooked as an end-of-the-week treat for her. He’d made chicken with rosemary and mashed potatoes, her favorite. He even shooed her from the kitchen when she’d tried to help and had served it to her at her seat, doling out extra mashed potatoes, over her protest.
The memory made her heart stop.
No.
She shook her head. It didn’t make sense. It couldn’t make sense. The blood work had to be wrong. Any other possibility was unthinkable. Impossible. There had to be a mistake.
She tried to puzzle it out, turning the cell phone over and over in her hand. Its smooth metallic finish caught the light from the harsh overhead fluorescents, and she flipped it open on impulse. The tiny, multicolored screen showed the menu and on impulse, she pressed the button for the call logs. On the screen appeared a sharp-focus highlighting of the last call that had been received. It should have shown that it was her father, but the caller’s name didn’t read DAD or even HARRY.
Instead, it read: MOZART.
Huh?
Why would Jack call her father Mozart? Puzzled, she flipped through the menu to the address book and skimmed the address list. The names were in alphabetical order, and she skimmed them: BACH, BEETHOVEN, BRAHMS, CHOPIN, HANDEL, LISZT, MAHLER, MENDELS-SOHN, SCARLATTI, SCHUBERT, SCHUMANN, SHOSTAKOVICH, SIBELIUS, TCHAIKOVSKY, VIVALDI.
What?
They were all composers. But Jack didn’t know anything about music; her father was the music expert. What was going on? It looked as if the names were some kind of code, on a cell phone she hadn’t even known existed.
What was happening? Who was Mozart? Had Jack heard from Harry? Had he lied about that? Why would he? Was Harry really okay? Suddenly, she didn’t understand anything. The miscarriage. The abortion pills. A secret phone with coded addresses. Her heart thundered in her chest. Her mouth went dry. She needed answers.
She pressed the button for MOZART, thumbed back to the call log, and pressed the button for the MOZART profile. It contained no real name, no email and no other information except for the phone number, which had too many digits. What did that mean? Then she realized there was a country code in front of the number. She didn’t know which country it was, but she knew it was an international number.