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  “Does Dr. Saunders do all the egg retrievals?” Joanna asked as she sat up and dropped her feet over the side of the bed. Then she slid off to stand while holding the johnny closed behind her back with her left hand.

  “He and Dr. Donaldson do them together.”

  “Do you think his coming in here means my roommate’s procedure is done?”

  “That would be my guess,” Myron said. “How do you feel? Any dizziness at all?”

  Joanna shook her head.

  “Then let’s get that IV out and get you on your way.”

  Fifteen minutes later Joanna was at the locker extracting her clothing, shoes, and bag. There were four other patients in hospital garb sitting on the couches and chairs and flipping through magazines. None of them paid her any attention. Deborah’s locker was still locked up tight.

  As Joanna entered the same changing room she’d used earlier, Cynthia arrived with Deborah in tow. Deborah’s face lit up with a broad smile when she caught sight of Joanna, and she immediately rushed over to squeeze into the changing room. She closed the door behind her.

  “How did it go for you?” Deborah demanded in a whisper.

  “It wasn’t bad at all,” Joanna answered, unsure why they were whispering. “The anesthesiologist said I might feel a little burning in my arm when he gave me the ‘milk of amnesia,’ but I didn’t feel a thing. I don’t even remember going to sleep.”

  “Milk of amnesia?” Deborah questioned. “What the hell is that?”

  “It’s what the anesthesiologist called the medicine he gave me,” Joanna said. “It was so rapid. It was like somebody just turned out the lights. I didn’t feel a thing through the whole procedure. And on top of that, I’m happy to report I didn’t have any nausea when I woke up.”

  “Not even a little queasiness?”

  “Nothing. And I woke up the same way I went to sleep: really suddenly.” Joanna snapped her fingers to emphasize her point. “The whole experience was benign. How was yours?”

  “Truly a piece of cake,” Deborah said. “No worse than a routine pap smear.”

  “No pain?”

  “A little, I suppose, when the local anesthetic went in, but that was it. The worst part was the humiliation of being looked into.”

  “How many eggs did they get?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea,” Deborah admitted. “I assume only one. That’s how many we women put out each month without hormonal hyperstimulation.”

  “They got five or six from me.”

  “Well, aren’t we impressed,” Deborah said in a playfully sarcastic tone. “How do you know?”

  “I asked,” Joanna said. “The doctor came by when I was in the recovery room. His name’s Dr. Saunders. You must have met him, because he’s the one who does the egg retrievals along with Dr. Donaldson.”

  “Was this Dr. Saunders a rather short guy with unusual eyes?”

  “He’s the one. I think he’s also kinda strange as well as quiet. What was weird was that he seemed to act mad when he found out I was already awake.”

  “Get out of here!” Deborah blurted.

  “I’m serious.”

  “The reason I’m surprised is that he acted mad with me, too.”

  “No kidding!” Joanna said. “Then he’s definitely got a problem, which is reassuring because I was wondering if I was making it up. You know me with authority figures.”

  “All too well,” Deborah said. “And you think he was irritated because you were awake?”

  “Yes,” Joanna said. “He snapped at the nurse because the nurse had told him a few minutes earlier on the phone that I was still asleep. I suppose he had it in his mind to breeze in and breeze out. Instead, he had to relate to me, such as it was.”

  “That’s absurd,” Deborah said.

  “The nurse excused his behavior by saying he was a busy man.”

  “He was equally inappropriate with me. Like everybody else he’d started in about wanting to use general anesthesia, and how much better it would be. But I just said no way. So he got mad. And you know what: It dawned on me why they had me suffer not eating or drinking since midnight. They thought they were going to talk me into it.”

  “You didn’t have it, did you?”

  “Hell no!” Deborah said. “I told them I was ready to get up and walk out, and I came close. If it hadn’t been for Dr. Donaldson, who smoothed things over, I think I would have. But anyway, it all worked out.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Joanna said.

  “I’m with you,” Deborah responded. She opened the louvered changing room door, winked at Joanna, and disappeared.

  Joanna could hear Deborah out in the waiting room banging open her locker as Joanna peeled off the hospital clothing and tossed it into a convenient hamper. For a moment she gazed at herself in the changing room’s full-length mirror. The thought of the small incisions beneath the Band-Aids made her shudder. They stood as minute reminders that someone had recently been looking into her innards.

  The crash of the neighboring louvered door closing snapped Joanna back to reality. Fearful of keeping Deborah waiting, who was notoriously quick at dressing, Joanna concentrated on getting into her clothes. Once that was accomplished she began brushing out her hair, which she’d pulled back into a ponytail for the procedure but which was now a mass of snarls. Before she was finished, she heard Deborah emerge into the waiting room. “How are you doing in there?” Deborah called through the door.

  “Almost ready,” Joanna answered. Her hair was giving her more trouble than usual, with loose ends dangling in her face. She’d had bangs in high school that she’d grown out in college. After a last check in the mirror, she finally opened the changing room door. Deborah rewarded her with an exasperated expression.

  “I hurried,” Joanna said.

  “Sure you did,” Deborah said as she got to her feet. “You should try short hair like mine. You’ll save yourself a lot of grief; it’s ten times easier.”

  “Never,” Joanna said jokingly, but she meant it. Despite the difficulties, she treasured her long hair.

  The two women called out a thank you to Cynthia, and she waved in acknowledgment. The women sitting on the couch and the chairs looked up, several smiled, but all had returned to their reading before Joanna and Deborah had passed through the swinging doors.

  “I just realized there’s something we forgot to ask about,” Deborah said as they walked down the main hallway.

  “Do I have to ask, or are you just going to tell me?” Joanna said with a sigh, when Deborah failed to complete her thought. She found it mildly irksome that Deborah had a tendency not to finish a thought unless prompted.

  “We forgot to ask how or when we were going to be paid.”

  “It’s certainly not going to be in cash,” Joanna said.

  “I know that!” Deborah grumbled.

  “It will be by check or wire,” Joanna said.

  “All right, but when?”

  “The contracts we signed stipulated we would be paid when we had performed our service, which we’ve now done. So they’ll pay us now.”

  “You seem to be more trusting than I,” Deborah said. “I think we should inquire about it before we leave.”

  “That goes without saying,” Joanna said. “I think we should page Dr. Donaldson if she’s not out in the main waiting room.”

  The two women came to the threshold of the waiting room and glanced around the generous space. Nearly every seat was taken. There were spotty areas of hushed conversation but in general the room was surprisingly quiet for being so crowded.

  “Well, no Dr. Donaldson,” Deborah said. Her eyes swept the room once again to be certain.

  “So, let’s have her paged,” Joanna said.

  Together they approached the central desk. The receptionist was an attractive, young, amply endowed redhead. She had pouty, full lips like many of the women gracing the covers of the magazines displayed in the grocery checkout line. Her nameplate said ROCHEL
LE MILLARD.

  “Excuse me,” Joanna said to get the woman’s attention. She was surreptitiously reading a paperback book cradled in her lap.

  The book disappeared as if by magic. “Can I help you?” Rochelle asked.

  Joanna asked for Dr. Donaldson to be paged.

  “Are you Joanna Meissner?” Rochelle questioned.

  Joanna nodded.

  Rochelle’s eyes switched to Deborah. “Are you Miss Cochrane?”

  “I am,” Deborah said.

  “I have something for each of you from Margaret Lambert, the comptroller.” Rochelle opened a drawer to her right and pulled out two envelopes with cellophane windows. Neither was sealed. She handed them to the surprised women.

  After exchanging a covert, conspiratorial smile, the two women peeked inside their respective envelopes. A moment later their eyes met with new smiles.

  “Bingo!” Deborah said to Joanna. She laughed. Then she turned to the receptionist and said: “Mille grazie, signorina. Partiamo a Italia.”

  “The first part means a thousand thanks in Italian,” Joanna said. “The rest I’m not sure about. And forget about paging Dr. Donaldson. It’s not necessary.”

  Leaving the confused receptionist, Joanna and Deborah started for the door.

  “I feel a little like a thief taking this kind of money out of here,” Deborah said sotto voce as they wended through the crowded room. Like Joanna she was clutching her envelope in her hand. She avoided eye contact with anyone, fearing she might be forced to face someone who’d had to mortgage her home to pay for infertility treatment.

  “With this many patients here I think the Wingate can afford it,” Joanna responded. “I’m getting the distinct feeling this business is a virtual money machine. Besides, it’s the prospective clients who are actually paying us, not the clinic.”

  “That’s just the point,” Deborah said. “Although I suppose those people choosey enough to demand a Harvard coed’s egg can’t be hurting for cash.”

  “Exactly,” Joanna said. “Concentrate on the idea that we are helping people, and they, in their gratitude, are helping us.”

  “It’s hard to feel altruistic getting a check for forty-five thousand dollars,” Deborah said. “Maybe I feel more like a prostitute of sorts than a thief, but don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining.”

  “When the couples get their children, they’ll be thinking they got the better deal by a long shot.”

  “You know, I think you are right,” Deborah said. “I’m going to stop feeling guilty.”

  They emerged into the crisp New England morning. Deborah was about to descend the stairs when she became aware that Joanna was hesitating. Glancing at her friend’s face she noticed that Joanna was grimacing.

  “What’s the matter?” Deborah asked with concern.

  “I just had a pang down here in my lower abdomen,” Joanna said. She gestured with her left hand over the area. “I even felt a twinge in my shoulder, of all places.”

  “Do you still feel it?”

  “Yes, but it’s better.”

  “Do you want to go back and see Dr. Donaldson?”

  Joanna tentatively pushed against her lower belly just in from the crest of her left hip. There was a mild degree of discomfort until she let go. Then she got another stab of pain. A whimper escaped from her lips.

  “Are you all right, Joanna?”

  Joanna nodded. Like the first spasm, the pain had been fleeting except for a remaining mild ache.

  “Let’s go page Dr. Donaldson,” Deborah said. She grasped Joanna’s arm with the intention of leading her back into the Wingate Clinic, but Joanna resisted.

  “It doesn’t feel that bad,” Joanna said. “Let’s go to the car.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Joanna nodded again, gently extracted her arm from Deborah’s grip, and started down the steps. At first it felt decidedly better to walk slightly bent over, but after a half dozen steps she was able to straighten up and walk relatively normally.

  “How does it feel now?” Deborah questioned.

  “Pretty good,” Joanna asserted.

  “Don’t you think it would be a better idea to go back in and see Dr. Donaldson, just to be on the safe side?”

  “I want to get home,” Joanna said. “Besides, Dr. Smith specifically warned me about having the kind of pain I’m experiencing, so it’s not as if it’s unexpected.”

  “He warned you about pain?” Deborah asked with surprise.

  Joanna nodded. “He wasn’t sure which side I would feel it on, but he said I’d have a deep ache with some stabs of sharp pain which is right on the money. The surprise for me is that I didn’t feel it until now.”

  “Did he have any suggestions for what to do for it?”

  “He thought ibuprofen would suffice, but he said that if it didn’t, I could have a pharmacist call him through the clinic’s telephone number. He said he’s available twenty-four hours a day.”

  “That’s strange they gave you a warning about pain,” Deborah said. “Nobody warned me, and I haven’t had any. I think maybe you should have insisted on local anesthesia like I did.”

  “Very funny,” Joanna said. “I liked being asleep through the ordeal. It was worth a bit of pain and the mild inconvenience of having to get three stitches removed.”

  “Where did you have stitches?”

  “At the peephole sites.”

  “Are you going to have to come back here to get them removed?” Deborah asked.

  “They told me any medical person could do it,” Joanna said. “If Carlton and I are talking by then, he can do it for me. Otherwise I’ll just stop in the health service.”

  They reached the car and Deborah went around to the passenger side to open the door for her roommate. She even supported Joanna’s arm as Joanna climbed in. “I still think you should have had local anesthesia,” she said.

  “You’re never going to convince me,” Joanna said with conviction. Of that, she felt sure.

  MAY 7, 2001

  1:50 P.M.

  A SHUDDER RIPPLED THROUGH

  the plane signaling the start of a period of mild, clear air turbulence. Joanna lifted her eyes from the paperback book she was reading to glance around the cabin to make sure no one else was concerned. She didn’t like turbulence. It reminded her that she was suspended far above the earth, and not being of a scientific mind, she didn’t think it was reasonable that an object as heavy as a plane could actually fly.

  No one had paid the few bumps and thuds any notice, least of all Deborah sitting next to her, who was enviably asleep. Her roommate hardly looked her best. Her now shoulder-length mane of almost-black hair was tousled and her mouth was slightly agape. Knowing Deborah as well as she did, Joanna knew she’d be mortified if she could see herself. Although the thought of awakening her passed through Joanna’s mind, she didn’t. Instead she found herself marveling at the transposition of their respective hairstyles. Deborah’s was now long while Joanna had spent the last six months with her hair short, even shorter than Deborah’s had been back when they had lived in Cambridge.

  Switching her attention to the window, Joanna pressed her nose up against the glass. By doing so, she could see the ground thousands upon thousands of feet below, and just as it had been fifteen or twenty minutes ago, it was featureless tundra interspersed with lakes. Having consulted the map in the airline magazine, Joanna knew they were flying over Labrador en route to Boston’s Logan Airport. The trip had seemed interminable, and Joanna was antsy and looking forward to their arrival. It had been almost a year and a half since they’d left, and Joanna was eager to set foot in the good old USA. She had resisted coming back to the States for the duration, despite her mother’s recurrent pleading, which was particularly insistent during the Christmas holiday seasons. The holidays were a big deal in the Meissner household, and Joanna missed them, especially when Deborah had gone back to New York to be with her mother and stepfather. But Joanna had been unwilling to face her
mother’s constant harping about the unmitigated social disaster caused by her breaking off the engagement with Carlton Williams.

  As they’d originally planned, she and Deborah had gone to Venice, Italy, to escape the humdrum aspect of their graduate student lives and to make sure Joanna didn’t have a relapse into believing that marriage was a necessary goal. At first they lived for almost a week in the San Polo district near the Rialto Bridge in the bed-and-breakfast that Deborah had found on the Internet. After that they’d moved to the Dorsoduro Sestière on the recommendation of a couple of male university students they’d met on their second day while having coffee in Piazza San Marco. With a bit of luck and a lot of walking, they had managed to locate a small, affordable two-bedroom apartment on the top floor of a modest, fourteenth-century house on a square called Campo Santa Margherita.

  As serious students, the women had quickly adapted to a strict schedule to facilitate their work. Every morning they made themselves get out of bed by seven regardless of the previous evening’s festivities. After a shower they’d descend to the campo and take a short walk to a traditional Italian bar for fresh cappuccinos, which was particularly pleasant in the summer months when they’d sit in the shade of the square’s plane trees. Then it was on to the Rio di San Barnaba to complete their colazione with fresh fruit purchased from the waterborne greengrocers, or verduriere. A half hour later they were back in the apartment at their respective workstations to write.

  Without fail they wrote until one o’clock in the afternoon. Only then did they turn off their laptops. After washing up and changing clothes, they headed to the restaurant they’d picked out for that day’s lunch, which often included a glass or two of white wine from Friuli. Then it was time to switch hats from committed doctoral students to tourists. Armed with a virtual library of guidebooks, they’d set out to visit the sites. Three afternoons a week they went to the university itself where they’d arranged to have Italian lessons as well as lectures on Venetian art.

  The women’s Italian sojourn wasn’t all work and serious touring. Socially they had a blast dating almost exclusively Italian men who were associated in some way with the university. Deborah’s first beau was a graduate student in art history who was also a gondolier in season. Joanna began seeing an instructor in the same department. But neither woman allowed herself to become terribly involved, maintaining, as Deborah described it, a decidedly male attitude toward dating: namely, treat it like a sport.