The Jodi Picoult Collection #4 Read online

  My head was spinning, and Sean looked utterly confused. “Wait a second,” he said. “What kind of lawsuit is this?”

  Ramirez glanced at you. “It’s called wrongful birth,” he said.

  “And what the hell does that mean?”

  The lawyer glanced at Marin Gates, who cleared her throat. “A wrongful birth lawsuit entitles the parents to sue for damages incurred from the birth and care of a severely disabled child,” she said. “The implication is that if your provider had told you earlier on that your baby was going to be impaired, you would have had choices and options as to whether or not to continue with the pregnancy.”

  I remembered snapping at Piper weeks ago: Do you always have to be so damn perfect?

  What if the one time she hadn’t been perfect was when it came to you?

  I was as rooted to my seat as you were; I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Sean spoke for me: “You’re saying my daughter never should have been born?” he accused. “That she was a mistake? I’m not listening to this bullshit.”

  I glanced at you: you had taken off your headphones and were hanging on every word.

  As your father stood up, so did Robert Ramirez. “Sergeant O’Keefe, I know how horrible it sounds. But the term wrongful birth is just a legal one. We don’t wish your child wasn’t born—she’s absolutely beautiful. We just think that, when a doctor doesn’t meet the standard of care a patient deserves, someone ought to be held responsible.” He took a step forward. “It’s medical malpractice. Think of all the time and money that’s gone into taking care of Willow—and will go into taking care of her in the future. Why should you pay for someone else’s mistake?”

  Sean towered over the lawyer, and for a second, I thought he might swat Ramirez out of his way. But instead he jabbed one finger into the lawyer’s chest. “I love my daughter,” Sean said, his voice thick. “I love her.”

  He pulled you into his arms, yanking the headphone jack out so that the DVD player overturned, knocking over the juice box onto the leather couch. “Oh,” I cried, digging in my purse for a tissue to blot the stain. That gorgeous, creamy leather; it would be ruined.

  “It’s all right, Mrs. O’Keefe,” Marin murmured, kneeling beside me. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Daddy, the movie’s not done,” you said.

  “Yes it is.” Sean pulled the headphones off you and threw them down. “Charlotte,” he said, “let’s get the hell out of here.”

  He was already striding down the hall, volcanic, as I mopped up the juice. I realized that both lawyers were staring at me, and I rocked back on my heels.

  “Charlotte!” Sean’s voice rang from the waiting room.

  “Um . . . thank you. I’m really sorry that we bothered you.” I stood up, crossing my arms, as if I were cold, or had to hold myself together. “I just . . . there’s one thing . . .” I looked up at the lawyers and took a deep breath. “What happens if we win?”

  II

  Sling me under the sea.

  Pack me down in the salt and wet.

  No farmer’s plow shall touch my bones.

  No Hamlet hold my jaws and speak

  How jokes are gone and empty is my mouth.

  Long, green-eyed scavengers shall pick my eyes,

  Purple fish play hide-and-seek,

  And I shall be song of thunder, crash of sea,

  Down on the floors of salt and wet.

  Sling me . . . under the sea.

  —CARL SANDBURG, “BONES”

  Folding: a gentle process in which one mixture is added to another, using a large metal spoon or spatula.

  Most of the time when you talk about folding, it involves an edge. You fold laundry, you fold notes in half. With batter, it’s different: you bring two diverse substances together, but that space between them doesn’t completely disappear—a mixture that’s been folded the right way is light, airy, the parts still getting to know each other.

  It’s a combination on the cusp, as one mixture yields to the other. Think of a bad hand of poker, of an argument, of any situation where one party simply gives in.

  CHOCOLATE RASPBERRY SOUFFLÉ

  1 pint raspberries, pureed and strained

  8 eggs, separated

  4 ounces sugar

  3 ounces all-purpose flour

  8 ounces good-quality bittersweet chocolate, chopped

  2 ounces Chambord liqueur

  2 tablespoons melted butter

  Sugar for dusting ramekins

  Heat the raspberry puree to lukewarm in a heavy saucepan. Whisk the egg yolks with 3 ounces of sugar in large mixing bowl; whisk in the flour and raspberry puree, and return the mixture to the saucepan.

  Cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until the custard is thick. Do not allow it to boil. Remove from heat, and stir in the chocolate until it is completely melted. Mix in the liqueur. Cover the base mixture with plastic to prevent a skin from forming.

  Meanwhile, butter six ramekins and dust with sugar. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

  Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks with the remaining ounce of sugar. And here is the part where you will see it—the coming together of two very different mixtures—as you fold the egg whites into the chocolate. Neither one will be willing to give up its substance: the darkness of the chocolate will become part of the foam of the egg whites, and vice versa.

  Spoon the mixture into the ramekins, just 1/4 inch shy of the rim. Bake immediately. The soufflés are done when they are well risen, golden brown on top, with edges that appear dry—about 20 minutes. But do not be surprised if, when you remove them from the oven, they sink under the weight of their own promise.

  Charlotte

  April 2007

  You can’t live a life without impact. It was one of the first things doctors told us when they began explaining the catch-22 that was osteogenesis imperfecta: be active, but don’t break, because if you break, you can’t be active. The parents who kept their kids sedentary, or had them walk on their knees so that they would be less likely to fall and suffer a fracture, also ran the risk of never having their children’s muscles and joints develop enough to protect the bones.

  Sean was the risk taker when it came to you. Then again, he wasn’t the one who was home most often when you had a break. But he’d spent years convincing me that a few casts was small price to pay for a real life; maybe now I could convince him that two silly words like wrongful birth meant nothing when compared to the future they might secure for you. In spite of Sean’s exit from the lawyer’s office, I kept hoping they might call me again. I fell asleep thinking about what Robert Ramirez had said. I woke up with an unfamiliar taste in my mouth, part sweet and part sour; it took me days to realize this was simply hope.

  You were sitting in a hospital bed with a blanket thrown over your spica cast, reading a trivia book while we waited for your pamidronate infusion. At first, you’d come in every two months; now we only had to make biannual treks down to Boston. Pamidronate wasn’t a cure for OI, just a treatment—one that made it possible for Type IIIs like you to walk at all, instead of being wheelchair-bound. Before this, even stepping down could cause microfractures in your feet.

  “You wouldn’t believe it, looking at her femur breaks, but her Z score’s much better,” Dr. Rosenblad said. “She’s at minus three.”

  When you were born and had a Dexascan reading for bone density, your score was minus six. Ninety-eight percent of the population fell between plus and minus two. Bone constantly makes new bone and absorbs old bone; pamidronate slowed down the rate at which your body would absorb the bone; it allowed you to move enough to build up strength in your bones. Once, Dr. Rosenblad had explained it to me by holding up a kitchen sponge: bone was porous, the pamidronate filled in the holes a little.

  You’d had over fifty fractures in five years with the treatment; I couldn’t imagine what life would have been like without it.

  “I’ve got a good fact for you today, Willow,” Dr. Rosenblad sai